It's "six of one or half a dozen of the other," but does the PCM bitstream even go to coaxial/optical, or is a "downmixed" Dolby Digital or DTS track? The information I'd seen about Dolby's approach was that the SPDIF outputs would get a signal in the DD format we've been using all these years, based on an embedded 5.1 mix that can be automatically converted from DD+ or TrueHD to DD5.1. The bottom line, of course, is exactly the same - you are dealing with a digital signal that offers no higher resolution than we already have on DVD's. The best route for those of us without HDMI 1.1+ audio input capability (which means most of us) is probably going to be 7.1 analog input.