Missing DVD audio dialog channel

Adam Skeaping

When I try to play DVDs on a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop (XPPro) with WMP
11.0.5721.5145, the 2 channel audio presented at the built-in SigmaTel stereo
out socket sounds like it's just the music/FXs channels. Dialog is way down
and mostly unintelligable behind ultra-wide stereo music and FX.

Oddly, dialog that should be off-center is not as loud as I would expect if
the problem was the center channel either missing or somehow out-of-phase
with the dialog component common to the front left-right channels.

The tech support info from the Help/About menu lists the following audio
codecs:

ACM Microsoft IMA ADPCM CODEC 0011 imaadp32.acm 5.1.2600.2180
ACM Microsoft ADPCM CODEC 0002 msadp32.acm 5.1.2600.2180
ACM Microsoft CCITT G.711 A-Law and u-Law CODEC 0007 msg711.acm 5.1.2600.0
ACM Microsoft GSM 6.10 Audio CODEC 0031 msgsm32.acm 5.1.2600.0
ACM DSP Group TrueSpeech(TM) Software CODEC 0022 tssoft32.acm 1.1.1.5
ACM Microsoft G.723.1 CODEC 0042 msg723.acm 4.4.0.3400
ACM Windows Media Audio 0161 msaud32.acm 8.0.0.4487
ACM Sipro Lab Telecom ACELP.net audio codec 0130 sl_anet.acm 3.2.0.0
ACM Indeo® audio software 0402 iac25_32.ax 2.0.5.53
ACM Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (advanced) 0055 l3codeca.acm 1.9.0.305
ACM Microsoft PCM Converter 0001
DMO WMAudio Decoder DMO 0160, 0161, 0162, 0163 wmadmod.dll 11.0.5721.5145
DMO WMAPro over S/PDIF DMO 0162 wmadmod.dll 11.0.5721.5145
DMO WMA Voice Decoder DMO 000A, 000B wmspdmod.dll 11.0.5721.5145

But how do I know what WMP is using for DVD audio? And if I did know, how
might I correct the problem?