Archos Recorder V1: SPDIF i/o capabilities? Recording digital data stream? (AC3)

[ta]

As for now, Rockbox only supports stereo PCM data via the SPDIF on Archos devices. I'm wondering if this is limited by hardware (the notorious MAS)? Is the format and data rate of the SPDIF hard coded or is a more variable configuration of the digital interface possible?

Could it be possible to bit-wise grab and play back other kinds of digital data stream via the SPDIF? for example, recording digital AC3 or DTS data into a kind of stream file? Of course it would never be possible to playback that file via the MAS and the analog headphone output. But maybe you could play it back via SPDIF out to an external decoder?

Would the SPDIF be flexible enough for that kind of usage?

[saratoga]

We dropped support for Archos players, so you can't use them at all in recent rockbox.

I'm not actually sure what the hardware supported.  Might be worth taking a look at the old mailing list archives.