Looks like I missed a very interesting debate while I was on the road yesterday and today.

I think that the first generation of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players are doing something dubious by only offering 5.1 analog outputs. On the one hand (the reason that they probably used to justify the decision), there are no 7.1 DD+ titles in the pipeline and 5.1 speaker setups are still very common. On the other hand (the reason I think it's unfortunate nobody is including 7.1 outputs), many of the early adopters that are going to actually have any interest in these players are running 7.1 setups. If we had HDMI 1.1 inputs on our processors, we could take those 5.1 PCM signals (which I, like obie, don't have a problem with) and apply a bit of processing to get a surround back signal (Pro Logic IIx is capable of it, after all). With that 5.1 analog output as the only way most of us can get to the new tracks (discounting the DTS downmix that is offered at the SPDIF output), our surround back speakers are left high and dry. True, it would add cost to include 7.1 outputs, enough DAC's to support all eight of those channels, and a chip to do a little matrix processing (most likely Pro Logic IIx-based) to offer the option of surround backs with 5.1 soundtracks, but it's a feature that would get used.