OT: mp3 -> ac3 -> SP/DIF output?

[Tom Horsley]

> Is there a media player that can do
> something like use the ffmpeg libraries to do the ac3 encoding
> on the fly and send the digital stream to my SP/DIF output?

Answering my own question, I'm currently listening to music
on my surround system being played via:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 -af lavcac3enc=tospdif <filename>

Only have to sort through the 47,621,337 possible command line option
combinations to figure it all out :-). (Actually I reused the alsa device
option from the DVD ac3 passthrough magic I found previously on the web).

I guess on the fly audio encoding isn't very demanding, my CPUs
are both hovering around 1 to 2% usage.