spdif digital audio help - no audio OUTSIDE of myfrontend

[false_apology]

Hey All,

I'm having a heck of time trying to solve this problem, and I'm hoping you all can help me. My problem is getting audio in applications OTHER then mythfrontend. I am using the spdif output of my soundcard to output to my JVC receiver. This is all working fabulously in MythTv - all my recorded and live playback works great, with surround sound. However, I cannot get any audio in other programs. For example, if I wanted to watch flash video in firefox, I get nothing. If I try and play back a video file that mythtv recorded, but using VLC, I get nothing. I know it can work, because it IS working in mythfrontend. I was trying to read some tutorials but nothing has really given me a good answer.
Here is my aplay -l


**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: V8237 [VIA 8237], device 0: VIA 8237 [VIA 8237]
Subdevices: 4/4
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
card 0: V8237 [VIA 8237], device 1: VIA 8237 [VIA 8237]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now, one tutorial said I had to create an /etc/asound.conf, and tell it to route all PCM to the spdif output. So I tried to do this, but it is still not working. Here is what I put in my asound.conf:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 1}

I tried both device 0 and device 1, neither works. If it helps, in the MythTV setup, under "Audio", my "Audio output device" is "ALSA:spdif" and the passthrough device is set to "Default". Like I said, for live/recorded shows and DVDs, audio works great. BUT, even in mythfrontend, audio DOES NOT work for online streams.

The motherboard is an ASUS K8V-SE DLX.

Can anyone point me the right direction?

Thank you