Hello, I'm a home theater noob and college student (i.e: not huge budget)

I currently have my Z-5500s hooked up to my PC, Blu-Ray player, DVR, and 360. (I have an optical switch)

I just was disappointed to find that DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD are not available to me because of the lack of an HDMI port (which is weird, because I thought that my BDs sounded way better than DVDs)

The Z-5500s connect to the Subwoofer via speaker wire and then to the receiver thing via a D-sub I think?

Can I take the speakers (probably not the subwoofer) and stick them in a receiver with HDMI? What should I look for and expect to pay? What is the chance the new receiver would DECREASE quality (keep in mind the Z-5500s are AWESOME! :D) How do I know what subwoofer to buy that is a good, reasonably small size (similarly sized to Z-5500 sub)

Thanks :)

Certainly you can connect the Z-5500 satellites to a receiver --- they are just ordinary speakers. You ought to be able to use the Z-5500 sub with a receiver, also, I think. Get a mini-stereo (male) to two rca (female) adapter (e.g., RadioShack 1/8" to Dual RCA Y-Adapter, 274-883) so you can plug a subwoofer line-out from the receiver into the Z-5500 center-sub connection. But I haven't tried this.

Thanks for the quick reply!

When buying a receiver, is there anything I would need to look out for? (Wattage, etc.) I've never bought any type of home theater equipment other than the Z-5500s, my HDTV and BD player.

I'd look for a receiver with automatic calibration -- setting of speaker volumes, distances, and equalization. I think that is extremely useful. Perhaps you could try asking in the AMPs, Receivers, and Processors forum.

Get a mini-stereo (male) to two rca (female) adapter (e.g., RadioShack 1/8" to Dual RCA Y-Adapter, 274-883) so you can plug a subwoofer line-out from the receiver into the Z-5500 center-sub connection. But I haven't tried this.
I did try this, this morning. It works fine to use the Z-5500 sub module as a subwoofer connected to a receiver.

To be honest, I'd save your cash (unless you want a new receiver for reasons beyond Dolby True HD/DTS-HD). The reason is you're probably not going to notice much of a difference if any between standard Dolby Digital and the high def formats, at least with the Z-5500's.

FWIW, I've got a HT with a good quality 7.1 surround sound setup and since getting a Blu-ray player recently, I don't hear much of a difference between high def sound and more compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 and regular DTS. Short of the HD tracks being remastered to sound different than the regular Dolby Digital/DTS tracks, I can't imagine you'd hear any difference.

So the HD vs. Compressed in DD and DTS difference (at least experience wise I guess) isn't as big as FLAC vs. MP3? (I'm going off of what I know) and thanks for letting me know I can use my sub :)

I haven't listened to FLAC versus MP3, so I can't advise you there.

But yeah, I think if you are concerned about sound quality, upgrading the speakers will yield far more than merely switching codecs.