I agree completely Rick! I was just lucky enough, maybe it was planning ahead, but my receiver has 7.1 analog in, so it was just a matter of getting the right Blu-Ray player that could do all of the HD audio decoding and send it to my receiver via analog.
I would really be struggling to justify a new receiver right now if I didn't have the analog option just to get the HD audio. I hear that it is better, but I have a hard time replacing something that I think works great right now so that I have some functionality that I haven't heard first hand and I am not sure, personally, if it is worth the cost to get a "lesser quality" receiver than my current one, but that has the HDMI and decoders.
