Do I HAVE to use HDMI?

[JJ]

Musicman, I'm with you too, although far be it from me to reiterate what kingofgrills has said - I don't think that those who posted contrary to your point have any idea what they are talking about considering audio equipment.

[MacDaddyOJack]

Originally Posted by JJxiv1215

Musicman, I'm with you too, although far be it from me to reiterate what kingofgrills has said - I don't think that those who posted contrary to your point have any idea what they are talking about considering audio equipment.

I fully agree with you and musicman that the optimal audio setting would reside with player decoding and analog outputs assuming the player has top-notch DAC's. However, there are no such players currently on the market so rather than confuse the OP, most of us opted to just say "yes" when he asked if HDMI was necessary. The fact still remains that for the best theater experience, HDMI is still needed as it is the only way to get a 1080p picture. If the OP had asked purely about 2 channel music sources then most of our responses would be invalid. But since he was referring to hometheater as a whole, an HDMI cable is a must.

Given the simplicity of his question and the player he was looking to buy, I had assumed that the upcoming Denon player with internal decoding and top-notch DAC's was overkill.