completely lost." I am. However I have made connections based on advise from Gonk, thanks Gonk, but still not up and running. BTW, I bought the Samsung HD 836 DVD player, not the Toshiba. These are my connections:

Samsung Plasma has component video to the 990 and HDMI/DVI to 990

Samsung DVD player has optical to the 990 and HDMI/DVI to 990

Cable box not hooked up yet.

Ok, I turned on the 990/7125 and pressed the menu button for setup, per instructions, and no menu popped up on the 990 or the tv. What is on the 990 screen is a diagram of my 5.1 setup. I have not hooked up my back surrounds yet, just my back right and left. Anyway, could someone walk me through this. I think I am close, but there is something that I am not doing that I can't figure out. I have to take this one step at at time. Newbie, but I want to learn. Thanks.