You know I used think I understood this but now I am confused. I have a Sony BDP S300 (which I hate, but that is a whole other topic!) that I just upgraded the firmware to v4.30 in the hopes of getting this thing to work better. In the process of getting the FW downloaded I noticed that one of the improvements listed was "Adds Dolby® TrueHD Audio and Dolby Digital Plus Audio decoding functionality" and I thought that is nice, but what good will it do me if my processor won't decode it.

Now in the process of doing the FW upgrade, it of course failed (another on the list of many reasons why this unit sucks) and I had to call support. Turns out it didn't really fail. Apparently, depending on what version you are starting from the upgrade completion state varies. I find that very strange but hey it least my unit didn't wind up brain dead.

Now back to the point, while talking to the Sony support person (who seemed knowledgeable for a change) I asked about the True HD Audio support. He told me that the S300 would decode it and send it either through the HDMI or Digital connection. And that my pre/pro should be able to play it back at the higher resolution.

So I am confused, maybe I need one of Gonk's crash courses on this topic I don't know, but can anyone give me a quick explanation as how this is going to work if in fact it is.

On my setup I have an HDMI connection direct to my HDTV and I am using the Optical connection to my 990.

I am so looking forward to my next upgrades, the Oppo BDP-83 and of course the 997. Life will be much easier then or least there will be fewer cables running through my rack!

The tech support person was a bit confused - "HDMI or Digital" was clearly meant to be "HDMI or multichannel analog." If you add multichannel analog cables (which means evicting the 981HD from that slot if you use it for any SACD or DVD-Audio), you can get access to TrueHD, multichannel PCM, and the two or three discs that actually use DD+.