New to Sound Bars

[Blu-Curry]

Hey there,

I was looking into having a small tv set up in my room some time in the future (so I'm in no rush to buy one now; just learning!) to play my original Xbox, and eventually PS3 whenever I end up getting a PS4.

I don't want to have anything too big when it comes to surround sound, so when I came across sound bars it seemed like a nice thing to simulate a surround sound environment.

I guess my main question is whether a receiver is required at all, or in some cases. After all, a sound bar is just a speaker? I decided to just look some models up and compared this Yamaha with this Polk: http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/compar...s%253d10208317

For the Yamaha there are No's down the column for all those DTS and Dolby Digital formats, while they're Yes's for Polk. But under the description for Yamaha it says it's 7.1 that can do DTS and Dolby Digital. So would the Yamaha require a receiver while Polk does not?

Sorry if this is really simple, I'm just new to sound bars haha.