Newbie to HDTV/Blu-Ray - what AVR specs do I need?

Hi all,

I've just got myself a Bravia WE5, which is the energy efficient equivalent of a W5500 I think? And my Blu Ray Sony S360 will be arriving soon.

So now my old analogue pro logic receiver is not really up to the job, as I get lip-sync issues if I send audio direct to the receiver and video direct to the TV. For analogue, the TV will only pass through stereo audio, no pro-logic.

I'm looking at getting a second-hand AVR, but I'm just not sure what specs I need to get digital surround from these components.

Does it need to have HDMI in and out? Or is optical in enough?

Do I send everything from the BR to the TV and let the TV pass audio out via optical to the AVR? I've seen some speculation that it doesn't always pass digital audio, sometimes it's downmixed to stereo...can this be true?

Or do I send audio direct to the AVR - how do I sync audio and video if there's a little bit of lag in the image (I'm pretty sensitive to it!) Do AVRs from a few years ago have delay features?

I also have a Mac Mini HTPC that can pass optical audio out - does that mean my AVR will need two optical inputs? From the few more budget models that I've looked at the back of recently, they've only had one.

Sorry to ask so many questions in one post - just trying to get my head around this topic.

Terrific reply, thankyou. That has sorted most of my questions.

I should have specified that its not broadcast TV I'm having any issues with - just playing DVDs (currently, and I would guess Blu Ray in the future).

It seems crazy that a TV have optical out but not pass whatever it receives directly out - it seems like those are there just to pass digital audio from broadcasts out, not for passing anything received via HMDI out (like a BR player).

Hehe, not a trick question re two optical ports, I just wondered if I was missing something else as I have only seen one port on anything I've looked at (obviously not looking at expensive enough models!).

So it sounds like whether I go HDMI or Optical, I need to make sure the receiver has delay capability. And if I go optical there needs to be more than one input (or alternatively if my BR player has coax digital out, use that).
But HMDI will probably be the easiest of all (and also most expensive I'd guess).

If I go HDMI, and audio and video is on one cable, which order to you plug things into each other? Is it BR->TV->AVR, or BR->AVR->TV? Does digital audio get passed through untouched?

Thanks again for your clear answers

So I've been looking at a few older Denon models with optical inputs on ebay. But it seems like older models don't have the capability to delay audio output to fix lip sync with LCD/Plasma displays. So does this mean I need to get a pretty recent model to fix this issue?

So does anyone know if the specs of an AVR have to specifically say lip-sync correction, for me to overcome this issue?

Mmm nice - but a little out of my pricerange I think! ;-)

Well I was told in another thread that I could get a second hand Denon or similar from say 5 years ago for $50...but in my research I think it's probably closer to $250-300 from what I can see. But these older models don't seem to have a lip-sync fix capability - so I guess I'm looking for the cheapest option for something that will have this capability! Second-hand if necessary.

Of course I want cheap, but also good