Well the reason I mention those two older formats is that those are the encoders you need to use a TON of older but still very useable hifi equipment. As far as I know if you want to get good quality sound to anything that uses TOSLINK (very common connector not just on older equipment) or the single orange digital audio cable (that looks like an orange RCA port) too. I specifically bought an older Roku 4K model that has the dolby digital plus encoder chip built in (and a TOSLINK output) so that I can keep using my still very nice sounding Yamaha receiver from the early 2000's. They only had the TOSLINK and DD chip for a brief period in the Roku 4K (current one does not have it and the oldest ones do not either). Basically what this means is that Netflix can have the latest and greatest audio on their stream (whatever is the best of the best in 5.1 currently) and this little chip will nicely re-encode it on the fly down to the best quality format my receiver can handle. If you do HDMI passthrough to Toslink or similar it will not work as theres no chip to re-encode.
Even a ton of modern motherboards have TOSLINK and lots of new equipment as well so its a worthwhile way to get a baseline quality 5.1 audio that still holds up very, very well for home systems today. DD+ with a good receiver and large speakers will blow away most of the cheaper Atmos systems.
You could also theoretically do this with most computers or a laptop with the right hardware and a little software digital encoder but the issue is that most of the time the way they have instituted DRM means that the browser is not going to even have access to 5.1 in the first place or your device (like any Nvidia graphics card for example - even if the HDMI output can include high quality audio) is going to just get 2.1 audio.
Even a ton of modern motherboards have TOSLINK and lots of new equipment as well so its a worthwhile way to get a baseline quality 5.1 audio that still holds up very, very well for home systems today. DD+ with a good receiver and large speakers will blow away most of the cheaper Atmos systems.
You could also theoretically do this with most computers or a laptop with the right hardware and a little software digital encoder but the issue is that most of the time the way they have instituted DRM means that the browser is not going to even have access to 5.1 in the first place or your device (like any Nvidia graphics card for example - even if the HDMI output can include high quality audio) is going to just get 2.1 audio.