Before I go....Charlie, I just wanted to say that I called Outlaw Tech and spoke to some dude who said I'm doing everything right - keeping all video inputs AWAY from the 1050. He said I should plug all audio sources into the 1050 and route all video directly to the TV. Hmmm....the only other HT system I've owned (for 4 days to be precise) was the Bose Lifestyle50, which was pretty much plug-and-play.

Also, Steve_C, right now I'm NOT routing any cable from the cable box to the VCR. It's wall-to-cablebox-to-TV. And TV-audio-out-to-1050. I'll be looking into these issues later though....

gonk, another reason why I left my VCR out of the cablebox scenario, is that the audio signal from my VCR is really weak (when playing VCR tapes), and so I thought of leaving the VCR out of the cable-TV setup. I'll swap the cable and see if it makes any difference.