I have hooked up the Samsung Blu-Ray player through two audio inputs on my Outlaw 990 processor -- using video 2 with optical input, and through 7.1 direct. I have set my Harmony to switch to 7.1 direct which was the reason for choosing this player -- only one with 7.1 analog and netflix connectivity.

The player hooks up well and sounds great. I have an Aquos 52" 1080p display and I hooked up my Pioneer Elite DVD and the Blu-Ray through a HDMI switcher so I could connect multiple devices.

Now, the questions:

When I play the Blu-Ray through 7.1, there is no apparent place on the blu-ray to select a sound mode so I have no idea if it is using any of the built-in Blue-ray modes or something else. Anyone have a clue on this one?

When I hook-up through the optical it does not want to use any of the built in modes except perhaps DD PLIIX or DTS Neo.

I would love to hear how others are hooking up this machine.

Each disc will be different, but typically the menu will have a settings or sound setup option that will let you pick an audio track (similar to DVD menus). You can also probably use an "Audio" button on the remote to scroll through the different audio tracks on the disc.

As for the 990, there is no audio processing possible with the 7.1 channel input.
When you use optical, you will get one of three things: Dolby Digital (the core DD track from Dolby Digital Plus or TrueHD), DTS (the core DTS track from DTS-HD HR/MA), or PCM stereo (downmixed from a multichannel PCM track). You can apply Pro Logic IIx or NEO:6 to any of those.

Thanks for the reply. I opened and watched Indiana Jones (the latest one), and it had True HD as the sound field. When played, unlike my DVD player, it had no lights indicating any sound processing. I will try another disk and see what happens. It still looked and sounded great.

When I pushed the audio button on the remote, it did not change anything, and when I went into the audio menu, my choices were english, spanish or I think french.

That means it only has one English track (TrueHD). If there is an "info" or "display" button on the player's remote, there may be some more details (my OPPO has a "display" button that brings up general details such as video codec used and audio format).