Hi all,

Newbie here.

I have a 990 to which was previously connected an Oppo OPDV971H DVD player. I've replaced it (the Oppo) with a Panasonic DMP-BDT310. I know that the 990 can't leverage the high quality audio out of HDMI (but my 978 can/will, any day now, ha ha ha ha ha )

I the meantime I have the optical output I can use and would like to know what settings for the 990 I should try to use - will it automatically sync to the best quality or do I need to guide it?

I've got 5 channels (FL,C,FR,RL,RR) to work with as far as speakers go.

The stated audio decoders on this machine are:
DTS-HD Master Audio Essential,
Dolby TrueHD,
Dolby Digital Plus,
DTS-HD High Resolution

I don't recognize any of them as options on my 990.

I saw on AVSforums.com this review stated:

The Sound menu has options for Dynamic Range Compression; PCM Down Conversion for 96kHz audio material; Downmix allows you to choose how you would like multi-channel audio to be dealt with as stereo - either as straight stereo or surround encoded and there's an option for setting Audio Delay. We also have 7.1ch Audio Reformatting which will scale 6.1, and below, surround encoded audio up to 7.1 when set at auto. Under the Digital Audio Output area you can choose to send your Dolby/DTS/MPEG audio sent Bitstream or PCM - Note: setting BD-Video Secondary audio to 'On' and sending your HD audio bitstreamed will result in them being sent as plain old Dolby Digital and DTS.

What to do? Any advise anyone could offer would be appreciated.

Thanks & regards,

Andrew