When I originally set up my system, with my Outlaw gear and Klipsch speakers, I also felt there was something really missing from the sound on movies and music when playing from my DVD player. It was a really inexpensive player that I had put down there initially while getting things set up. I swapped it out with a more expensive (but not high-end) dvd player, and the sound was night and day. I was also using optical out in both cases, and never attempted to prove why this was. Just assumed the cheap player sounded like crap.