AV sound / surround sound from laptop files ??

[budd]

I have quite a few files on my laptop hard drive some of which have surround encoding (AC3 /dolby Tru-HD / DTS Master Audio etc) my AV amp is a big Onkyo with HDMI and supports all the audio formats, basically what I want to do is access the HD sound options. Currently all I can get is stereo via the laptop 3.5mm, I thinking it's the laptop that is the limiting factor and simply doesn't have the necessary audio card or capibility to send the audio in HD. So rather than mess about with the PC is there a media player with an internal HD so I can trasfer the files and output them with a full range of audio options via HDMI to my amp which will do the de-coding?

[Funk]

I would just buy an external USB soundcard. Creative do a reasonable one for about £70:

http://www.creative.com/uk/p/sound-blaster/1138/so...

Asus also do some good kit as well, here's their 7.1 USB card for about the same price:

https://www.asus.com/uk/Sound/Xonar_U7/

All you do is install it and set your laptop to use that as the default soundcard when connected.

[budd]

I thought of that but struggled to find any with HDMI to pass through the video with the audio, what I'm looking at is something like this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B00V9Z4JFC...
But there are quite afew available and while they aren't very expensive it would be nice to have some input from someone as tried one or something similar.
Then there's a this the Western Digital TV live box which looks like it does the same job only more expensive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-WDBPUF0000NBK-EESN-TV-M...
something along the lines of either of the above should sufice but which one ?