really beginner type question sorry

[kazza2ud]

This will probably bother a lot of you audiophiles but I'm thinking of getting a PS3 and was wondering if I could just use component cables to output audio to my stereo (like a real stereo, with radio and CD players etc, lol), just so I could use the 2 stereo speakers. How much better would the audio sound on games and movies if I used HDMI (I still don't understand if component cables are actually worse than HDMI or if HDMI is just an attempt to install that copyright protection protocol in all of our home theaters) and an HDMI AV receiver, like an Onkyo 606 or something? I understand that these receivers have decoders to process the HD audio formats. I guess my stereo doesn't have that eh? PS3 games don't have HD sound though do they? Would it matter for that? My current TV doesn't do 1080p, I don't know if that makes a difference with which cable I should use (like I don't need crazy bandwidth maybe if I'm not doing 1080p). Thanks, sorry for how uneducated I am with audio, it's the one tech thing I never really understood well.