I defaulted to leaving the cable box on all the time, then the 990 comes on followed by the TV which takes about 4-5 secs to power on and acquire the HDMI signal. This is all done via Macro on my Harmony 880 remote now.

My switch from coax to optical did not solve the occasional lip synch issue and hence me leaving the cable box on always. Getting to the stable settings I have now took a matter of months of trial and error, tweaking, tuning etc. But I actually like to dabble and then get it "perfect" for me, then sorta set it and forget it which is what it has been for the past 6 months plus.

I have a SA8300HD DVR, Philips 42" LCD, 990, 770 amp, and Pioneer DV79, SMS-1, all programmed with macros for the settings for various modes.