Sorry if this has been asked before but there is so much good info here it is hard to find what you need.

I recently purchased a Sharp 46' 1080p tv (60U46) from Costco. I am going to upgrade to HD once the wife and I catch up on everything on our dvr box. The new HD cablebox will have an HDMI output plus an digital audio optical output.

With my limited understand the HDMI interface will carry both the video and audio to the tv. My receiver does not accept HDMI inputs.

So my thoughts are this. Use an optical cable from either the cable box to the receiver or the tv back to the receiver. Which would be best for quality? I am leaning towards from the tv's digital out because then the sound from the Wii would pipe through the receiver as well.

Also I plan to get an upconvert DVD player next month and will also use HDMI with that as well. If I go with the tv's digital output to the receiver, then the DVD audio will play on the same input as the tv. Is there a quality difference between that and going straight from the dvd player to the receiver. In my mind there should be because of the extra cables.

Thanks.

I don't think the optical out of the TV will pass your Wii's analog audio. On mine it's for the HD OTA antenna digital audio output. I use HDMI from the STB for video and pass optical audio from the stb to my receiver and it works fine.