Need Advice/Suggestions for My 7.1 Setup

[triadpc]

Hi,

I have been dabbling into home audio/video for a few years now and recently upgraded to a 7.1 setup.

I have an Onkyo TX-SR674S receiver, Proficient Audio in-wall speakers and Subwoofer, a Panasonic 50" plasma TH-50PZ85U, and an old Toshiba HD-DVD player HD-A2 (no bashing yet, please).

I am considering purchasing my 1st blu-ray player (Panasonic DMP-BD50), because I want the newer HD audio formats.

Now, here is my dilemma...my receiver (which is new to me, but probably old in today's standards) has only HDMI 1.1 (2 in and 1 out) and the Panasonic blu-ray player has version 1.3 (as well as my Panasonic plasma TV).

I have read the sticky about "HOW TO GET: Uncompressed PCM, Dolby TrueHD & Dts-HD MASTER Audio", but I'm not quite sure I understand it completely.

From what I read, the weak link in my setup is going to be my Onkyo receiver (since it only supports HDMI v.1.1), so I will need to get a blu-ray player that performs the audio decoding and sends the audio signal to my receiver.

I do not want to go out and purchase a new receiver, so with my current setup, am I limited to only receiving "Linear PCM" to all my speakers?

If so, how should I connect everything? I'm assuming that I need to run HDMI from the back of the blu-ray player to my receiver, then out of my receiver with HDMI to my TV.

I also have a DirecTV H20 receiver, which I need to be able to connect back to the receiver as well. These are the only 2 HD sources that I will have in my setup, since I'll be retiring the old Toshiba HD-A2 to another room in the house.

In the past, I have always ran seprate audio and video cables for every device that I have connected to my receiver (probably due more to ignorance more than anything else), but I always felt that the receiver did a better job with processing the audio (and I didn't like the idea of having audio/video running over the same cable). So, I would always run a separate video cable from each device (DVD player, HD satellite box, etc.) straight to the TV and a separate audio cable (usually digital coaxial or toslink fibre optic) from each device back to the receiver.

Now, I realize that I need to run HDMI or analog 5.1/7.1 cables from the blu-ray player to the receiver in order to get the new HD audio signals.

I also have a Harmony 890Pro remote, which complicates things even more (with the HDMI switching).

Right now, I have the separate audio/video connections and use the 'All Channels' option on my receiver to play the audio through my 7.1 setup. I know that this is not the optimal setup (since each channel is not dedicated to each speaker), so I'm looking for advice in getting the best bang out of my current setup by changing the way that I have everything connected.


Thanks to all who respond.


Shannon