Right I have a sound card c-media something or other with optical in and out I have a dvd player with optical out.

I connect my optical cable from the output of my dvd player to the input of my sound card. Why can I not get the sound to go to the rest of the speakers.

I have a red light shining out the end of my optical cable so I assume there is data as I can turn it off an on, on the DVD player. Any ideas.

I don't know this card in detail but on some you have to go into the application\sound card settings and select which input\output to use.

The same applies for the DVD player, if it's illuminated it doesn't neccesarily mean that data is being sent over the link..

S/PDIF is a digital uadio interface, and is stereo. Now the optical out on your DVD player may or may not be compatible with your soundcard. If the soundcard is Dolby 5.1 compatible then you might be ok, if not then the two won't talk.

On my dvd palyer you can set the out on the optical out to either stereo or surround. I'm guessing you need to try to see if you can switch yours to stereo (presuming the SC is not surround).