PC - AV Receiver - TV, all via HDMI?

[-C-]

As i'm a bit behind the times, i'm after a bit of advice please...

Our ancient (and massive) Plasma screen's days are numbered, so i'm looking at replacing it, but going the whole hog and updating everything.

Question is, we stream everything from the PC (TV/Film/Music etc) so if I have a setup as per the title, is there any reason why that won't work?

Reason for the AV receiver was because most new screens are a lot slimmer & don't seem to have and inbuilt speakers, plus I have a nice set of Mordaunt Short speakers sat doing nothing, which I should take advantage of.

Any fatal flaws to my plan?

[Bullett]

Depends on you PC and what graphics car it uses. Mine has a dedicated card so doesn't do Audio, if the only output is HDMI then it will do audio.

So if you PC does audio via hdmi you are good to go. If it doesn't you will need a connection from the sound card to the amp. Optical for preference although this drops down the audio quality for some formats (No Blue Ray HD audio via Optical). This may not be an issue for you.

[Gingerbread Man]

I built a media centre PC, the HDMI graphics card which can handle the audio and video cost me roughly £25.

Most new amps can up all of it's inputs via as single HDMI cable.

[TEKNOPUG]

Pretty sure i-Player doesn't support HD Audio. I've certainly never seen any shows output HD Audio on anything other than Blu-Ray and equivalents. I'd be interested if you could suggest some i-Player content I could test?

[TEKNOPUG]

It does DD 5.1 surround but I'm pretty certain that no one broadcasts in TrueHD or DTS-HD, the bitrates are too large as it's basically lossless audio.

On Sony receivers, does the blue light not just indicate that the receiver is doing the decoding and not that it is TrueHD/DTS-HD? On Denon receivers for example, the blue light only comes on when it's HD audio, which would explain why I don't see it on iPlayer etc.

Edited by TEKNOPUG on Sunday 25th November 12:25

[arun1uk]

The alternative is....

- Panasonic VT30, Yamaha Amp, PS3, BluRay, Tivo, Laptop.
- PS3, BluRay and Tivo into amp via HDMI. Amp to TV via output HDMI, including ARC return. 5.1 surround speakers driven by Amp.
- Install Twonky Manager http://www.twonky.com/products/twonkywindows/defau... on Laptop/PC, which will turn your laptop/PC into a media server
- Using a Smart TV or PS3, connect to the media server you created and voila. You have streaming media and no need to connect your PC directly to your TV, unless you have a desire to? Only drawback will be the number of formats supported by your TV. I would use the PS3 as it supports more.

Bask in your glory of being a man.

[Bullett]

or a Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc/XBMC and again using the laptop as a server.

Easier for the wife to use (all important WAF) looks better than trying to use DLNA.