5.1 AAC audio in video still playable

I am close to cutting the cable and going itunes and OTA for locals. MY PC has an HDTV capture card that can capture to H.264 with 5.1 and 2.0 AAC audio.

I would like to keep the 5.1 audio as it can record at 320kbps and vs 128kpbs for the 2.0 setting.

Can the AppleTV 3 play back this type of audio via HDMI? Even if its 2.0 that is ok with me. If I "need" the surround, I can always play back on my LG BR and output it as 5.1 PCM over HDMI to a receiver.

Given that MP4, M4V and quicktime trailers have 5.1 aac audio, not sure why Apple would not do more to support it.

THX, JNT

AFter reading some posts on the Apple support site, its seems that the Apple TV will downmix the 5.1 aac to 2.0 PCM over hdmi.

Thats ok for my dvr recordings. But it cant be much for apple to just push out 5.1 PCM over HDMI for Dolby and AAC.

(Maybe it will come in an update.)