Back in July I wrote about Apogee's Kanex adapter that takes audio and video from a Mac and runs it over an HDMI cable to a HDTV. Combining the video from a Mac's Mini DisplayPort and headphone jack, and running them both via HDMI, was a clever way to get the contents of your Mac to come out of that flat-screen on your wall.
However, the product did have one drawback: no support for digital audio. That's been addressed in a new $70 adapter from Apogee, the Kanex Mini DisplayPort with Digital Audio to HDMI adapter.
The new adapter is, like the earlier model, a small off-white box with an HDMI port on one end. (You supply the HDMI cable to run to your TV.) On the other end of this model are three cables--a Mini DisplayPort cable for video, a USB port to power the adapter, and a Toslink optical port. The adapter comes with a minijack-to-Toslink cable that's compatible with the headphone jacks on Mini DisplayPort-bearing Macs.
As a result, this new model can transfer digital audio streams, including DTS and Dolby Digital, via HDMI. Good news for people with snazzy home-theater audio systems.
There was only one drawback to the adapter, as far as I could see--the minijack side of the included minijack-to-Toslink cable was so fat, it wouldn't plug into the headphone jack of my MacBook Air. The adapter should work fine with all other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
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