Home Theater Set-up Question....

[sd_semro]

First off I'm new to the board and thought I'd give a short intro of myself...

I'm a college student athlete at Marian College. I'm double majoring in Sport Management / Marketing with a minor in Econ. I'm from IN.

I just wanted to say thanks for any advice in advance....

I have a 37 in Vizio 1080i resolution and a 7.1 Onklyo Surrond Sound System.

For this holiday season I'm looking to add a Blu-Ray Player.

My onkyo receiver only passes through HDMI and doesn't pick up audio. It also doesn't decode the new formats for Blu-Ray.

I was looking at the Panasonic DMP-BD 35, and thought this would be the best fit for myself with it having a digital audio output and it also decoding the new formats.

I was also wondering how much of a difference audio is through an HDMI and an optical cable. I know an optical cable takes out any interference, I believe.

I was also wondering if the speakerwire and HDMI cords from monoprice.com would be a good investment.

Thanks again

[MrBoylan]

First off I'm new to the board and thought I'd give a short intro of myself...

I'm a college student athlete at Marian College. I'm double majoring in Sport Management / Marketing with a minor in Econ. I'm from IN.

I just wanted to say thanks for any advice in advance....

Damn, I think the BPBS forum just became "The Dating Game."

I have a 37 in Vizio 1080i resolution and a 7.1 Onklyo Surrond Sound System.

For this holiday season I'm looking to add a Blu-Ray Player.

My onkyo receiver only passes through HDMI and doesn't pick up audio. It also doesn't decode the new formats for Blu-Ray.

I was looking at the Panasonic DMP-BD 35, and thought this would be the best fit for myself with it having a digital audio output and it also decoding the new formats.

I was also wondering how much of a difference audio is through an HDMI and an optical cable. I know an optical cable takes out any interference, I believe.

I was also wondering if the speakerwire and HDMI cords from monoprice.com would be a good investment.

Thanks again

It would help if you post your receiver model number. If your specific receiver does not support any audio over HDMI (if it is indeed "video passthrough" only), then the BD35 is not going to be your best choice. The BD35 does decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD but only to PCM format over HDMI. It still requires a receiver that supports HDMI audio (PCM format) for best performance.

For best results with a receiver that does not support HDMI audio, you'd actually want to get a player that decodes the new formats to multi-channel analog output like the Panasonic DMP-BD55, the Samsung BD-P2500 or 2550 or the Sony BDP-S550. This way you can use the player's multi-channel analog outputs plugged into the receiver's multi-channel analog inputs and still take full advantage of Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and multi-channel PCM soundtracks.

In terms of your other question, yes you could use a fiber optic cable to pass the digital signal to your receiver, but fiberoptic (TosLink) connections are inferior to HDMI in that they do not support the high bit rate audio formats (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD or multi-channel PCM). This means you'll get the lossy legacy soundtracks instead (regular DTS and Dolby Digital). This can still give you good results except with multi-channel PCM soundtracks on Blu-ray Disc which will be passed over fiber as regular 2-channel (stereo) PCM.

I have no direct experience with the monoprice cables but they generally get good reviews from owners, so they're worth a shot since they tend to be fairly cheap.

Good luck!

-Chris