Am I missing something obvious?

[ScubaSteve_]

Hi all,

New to the forum. After exhausting (albeit conflicting at times) research, I have ended up here with the following situation.

I have a 46" Sharp Aquos LCD TV that is less than 2 years old. I believe it supports (without going off on a tangent) 1080i as 1080p wasn't as prominent in LCDs when we purchased the TV from BestBuy. When our house was built we elected for a "home theatre pre-wire" option which basically gave us surround sound pre-wire and in-wall component cables run from behind where the TV is mounted to the cabinet housing all of our electronics. They told us afterwards that we wouldn't be able to get 1080p but that HD channels were broadcast in 1080i anyway (again, not going off on another tangent) so I didn't think anything of it.

I have since purchased a HK receiver and received a Magnavox Blu-Ray player as a gift. I noticed that when we watch Blu-Ray movies, it doesn't seem to be anything extraordinary. I was expecting a lot more as when I see Blu-Ray demos @ local stores the picture looks so real it almost looks fake if that makes any sense. Nevertheless, I don't get that amazing picture, but rather one that looks more DVD-ish. Note that we sit maybe 10-12 feet from the TV.

I am currently running the Blu-Ray player into the receiver via component cables, and a single set of component cables from the receiver, thru the wall, and to the TV.

I have tried running component cables directly from the Blu-Ray player to the TV but the picture doesn't change. I'm itching for that same quality of picture I saw in the stores and am not sure what I'm missing here.

Blu-Ray player output is set to 1080i. TV is set to 1080i and the on-screen display confirms that it is indeed displaying 1080i. I have read pages and pages on the HDMI vs. component issue and heard everything from "you will barely notice any different, if any" to "you need HDMI period".

Not sure what else to try at this point. My wife saw Batman on Blu-Ray at a friends house and now she won't shut up about it. Helping me resolve this predicament would greatly extend one of our lives.

Would really appreciate some guidance in troubleshooting this. I find it hard to believe that I need HDMI but I'm also admittingly ignorant to much of this. If needed, I can provide model #s for my TV, receiver, and Blu-Ray player should it help. Thanks in advance.

v/r,
Steve