No. There is no technical reason you need to go with a 7.1 channel system if 5.1 meets your needs.

This is going to be more confusing but if your TV has HDMI I would connect directly from the HD DVD player to the TV for video and run the 5.1 analog to the 990 for audio.

ANOTHER EDIT: I went back and looked at an earlier post of yours and see you have a 7.1 speaker arrangement so you have what is currently available regarding 7.1. Again I am not aware of any device that outputs in 7.1 that is for the future.

Just a note, since you are dealing with so much that is new to you have you considered the consulting/installation services of a professional installer in your area?

Please bear in mind that the HDMI carries both the video and audio signal. The HDMI cable will support any of the multi channel audio(up to 8 channels!) but most displays only have stereo. You could use a DVI adaptor and then use the 5.1 analog outputs for the audio. I can't say if the Toshiba player disables the 5.1 analog output when using the HDMI cable.

According to what I'm reading on the Toshiba site, those DVD players only support 5.1 audio in either HDMI or analog output. However if you use the standard S/PDIF coax or optical you will get whatever is on the DVD (which could be DTS 6.1 or DD EX), except the new audio formats.

The advantage I see you getting using the analog output or HDMI audio is if the DVD is encoded in the new audio formats, but only 5.1.

Can the 990 do Dolby PLIIx on the 5.1 analog input? If so then it will expand the 5.1 input into 7 channels.

Recent article online from CNET.com, " Ten Ways HD-DVD Falls Short "

Very weak criticism.....Sounds like a Bluray supporter!

It does not. I'm one of the one's who was going to buy one of these until all the bug reports started popping up. Audio being one of them. If you use any type of scaler or pass through in front of the audio source the HDA1 drops the audio down to two channel. The work around has been HDMI to the scalers and running the 5.1 to the preamp and hope for no lip sync issues. There are a bunch of other bugs but that goes beyond the scope of what is being asked. Bottom line I'm waiting for some other vendors to release a HD DVD player.

Jeff

If you are talking about the new HD DVDs they do not have DTS or DD tracks. What you will get on the S/PDIF is the DD+ or DTS-HD track encoded (downcoverted) to regular DTS. In which case you could layer DTS-ES or DP-IIx to get the rears, but in a lossy format.

All the HD-DVDs have the new formats. The advantage to the analog outputs is you get the full resolution sound not a lossy DTS format. The real solution is HDMI.

Quote:

Can the 990 do Dolby PLIIx on the 5.1 analog input? If so then it will expand the 5.1 input into 7 channels.

No it can not.

This is a direct quote from a middle of a DVD review from Bill Hunt at the Digital Bits:

To clarify a little, the DolbyHD audio on the initial DVD releases is downconverted in the Toshiba players to allow it to come out of the coaxial/toslink outputs. It's downconverted to a bitrate that is equal to current DTS standards. I highly recommend reading all of Bill's posting on his experiences with the Toshiba player on this site:

www.thedigitalbits.com

He explains what's going on with this player and the format a lot better than most people out there. It's well worth the read if you own the player or are thinking of getting it.

You can use both the HDMI and 5.1 analog outputs at the same time. The Toshiba will not disable the output to the analog side when HDMI is connected. I tried this just a few minutes ago and got a big boost in sound clarity.

Miscanthus, I would suggest simply taking HDMI out from my Toshiba HD DVD player and running it directly into the rear HDMI input on the Samsung plasma display. No need to go to your 990 with an HDMI to DVI cable. The only benefit you would gain by doing this is the capability of using the 990 as a switching unit for your video sources. If this is of importance to you then by all means run the video through the 990. You will have to purchase a second DVI to HDMI cable if you choose to do this. Toshiba HDMI out to 990 DVI in. 990 DVI out to Samsung HDMI in.

If you do not want to use the 990 to switch between your video sources. Then do as I originally suggested. Toshiba HDMI out to Samsung HDMI in. Plain and simple. This will take care of getting the video signal to the display. Also, you will not have to buy a second cable.

Now for the audio side. Simple, 5.1 analog Out from the Toshiba HD DVD to 5.1 analog in on the 990. This option is the best that you can do with this player for right now. This is how I have recently set mine up to play and it sounds way better than this next option.

Audio option 2. Take a fiber optical cable and connect the Toshiba's optical output to the optical input on the 990. That's it. This option works but does not offer the benefit of Dolby Digital Plus. All output is in DTS format ONLY.

I suggest using a 5.1 speaker setup for now. 7.1 output is obviously not supported through the analog outputs, and the optical or digital coax. is not going to support any of the higher audio formats found on HD DVD. The Toshiba transcodes all audio formats to DTS as a default setting when output over an SPDIF connetion like optical or digital coaxial cable. This means 5.1 or at best 6.1 surround sound.

In order to get 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus you will have to use the HDMI output. But, there are no receivers or processor on the market which support HDMI inputs for audio processing as of yet. At least I am unaware of any that do.
This is something for the near future. You will be looking for a processor or receiver which supports a version 1.3 HDMI input on the back panel. To be honest the Toshiba will only support Dolby True HD in a 2 channel format. Furthermore, it does not offer support for any of the Dolby True HD multi-channel (7.1) formats. Also DTS HD is not supported according to the manual. I am still a little fuzzy on the DTS HD as it is not all that clear. Anyway I hope this helps you out a little.

First off there is no 7.1 DD+ software available or AFAIK even announced. There are HDMI1.1 receivers and at least one HDMI 1.1 Pre/Pro namely the Anthem D2. Everyone keeps saying you need HDMI 1.3, including the Digital Bits article. I'm not buying into that because 1.1 can handle 8 channels of high resolution LPCM data. It is a matter of where you want the data decoded, in the player or the Pre/Pro. I'd just as soon leave the decoder in the player assuming the newer models can do more then just two channels of TrueHD. Once you have the 5.1 raw digital LPCM data in your Pre/Pro you should be able to apply processing to it to get the rear channels.