Its getting time to replace my old 5.1 receiver for a new one and I am thinking of picking up a 7.1 system (debating brands, but thats another story). My question is that I notice that every game supports 5.1, but if I get a 7.1 capable system, will it support that or will I just get 5.1 channels when playing games?

Very few games and movies are mastered in 7.1. All 7.1 receivers will re-sample 5.1 to 7.1. I own an Onkyo 950 and it does an excellent job in remixing any stereo and up signal to 7.1. Halo 3 sounds great up-mixed to 7.1 :)

Here's an important question. Why go to 7.1?

Here's an important question. Why go to 7.1?

Here's another one: why not?

>>All 7.1 receivers will re-sample 5.1 to 7.1.

Not all receivers can matrix 5.1 lossless pcm into 7.1, so you might check into that if you own or will own a ps3.

Here's another one: why not?

Mainly because if you have a room that is not large enough, the spacial separation between speakers will negate any potential benefit that the added 2 rear channels will offer.

The bottom line is no it does not offer 7.1. For me its not a bid deal as I haven't moved to 7.1 yet, but its understandable that this would be annoying to the audiophiles.

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I will just look into a mid end 5.1 receiver seeing as I won't have much use for the 7.1.

My understanding was that the Xbox360 didn't do multichannel PCM via HDMI (on HDMI-enabled units) due to internal bandwidth limitations; I know it certainly can't do multichannel PCM over TOSlink (because this is technically impossible due to the bandwidth of the media) - stereo is the best it can do, other than DD5.1 (which *only* does 5.1, matrix encoding of additional channels and the poor channel separation that comes with that aside). Or did I miss something? Most receivers have either DD EX or Dolby ProLogic IIx available to fill in the extra channels, so you'll get *sound* from them, just interpolated to the speaker position.