I am in the process of upgrading my directv to HD. In reviewing my current setup and future setup, I have a question about the HDMI cable. I am currently running s video and optical audio from my non-HD sat box to my AV receiver. From there, I run a s video to my tv. the AV receiver has no HDMI inputs on it. I plan on upgrading this in the future. With the new setup, I was planning on running HDMI cable from sat box to tv and also optical out from sat box to AV receiver? Will this work this way?

I am in the process of upgrading my directv to HD. In reviewing my current setup and future setup, I have a question about the HDMI cable. I am currently running s video and optical audio from my non-HD sat box to my AV receiver. From there, I run a s video to my tv. the AV receiver has no HDMI inputs on it. I plan on upgrading this in the future. With the new setup, I was planning on running HDMI cable from sat box to tv and also optical out from sat box to AV receiver? Will this work this way?

As you probably know, your new sat box HDMI connection will carry both video and audio to your TV, however the optical output from your sat box will also be active. Therefore, your plans will work.

Actually, that's essentially what I'm doing, as I'm feeding my video via HDMI to my plasma display and optical audio to my AV receiver.

Yes, it should work just fine. The STB will send the video & 2 channel stereo on the HDMI link to your TV. The only requirement is that your STB is able to keep its SPDIF (optical) connector active while using HDMI, and that it will allow the SPDIF connector to output a different format than the HDMI port. Most playback devices can do this, but some older ones would:

- turning off all other audio connectors when HDMI is used (no reason to do this, certainly not a limitation with the HDMI spec)
- would only clone the same audio format going over HDMI onto all the analog connector (again, not a limitation of HDMI, but a design decision by the manufacturer).

These days, manufacturers of playback devices have come to realize that many consumers are using the exact same setup as you (HDMI directly to the TV, SPDIF to their existing AVRs).

Final suggestion is that you list the exact STB you plan to get, and confirm from other users in this community that the STB does these things properly with the SPDIF connector.