Need opinions on receiver settings

[pdmaxima04]

The other day i went to a friend's house to help him setup his subwoofer that was given from my brother in law. My friend has Samsung LN46A650 & Sony S350 Blu Ray and Sony Reveiver. I forgot the model of the receiver. But it has 4 HDMI connections.

What i noticed, he did not use any of his HDMI connections from the receiver. So i asked him why? He said that my brother in law setup for him and he does not know why he did this way.

- From the Blu-Ray... HDMI straight to the TV.
- From the cable tv box..... coax to Audio Digital out to receiver and HDMI to TV

I had an arguement with about this. I told him why not plug HDMI from Sony Blu-Ray to Receiver and another HDMI from Receiver to TV. For cable tv box either use component cable to TV or HDMI to Receiver....He said doing that way i will lose alot of Video Signal something like that....

So can someone tell me which setting is better i would appreciate....i guess im trying to prove him that he is wrong.

Thanks to everyone