Question on why not hooking HDMI into Receiver

I'm not really sure why they did that. Your receiver is HDMI capable, including lossless audio formats, so there is an advantage of running HDMI that way. Perhaps there were issues with switching through the receiver that I am not aware of, but other than that it would seem that they should have run HDMI to the receiver to get lossless surround at least for the BD.

They might have done it that way so you could have audio right from the TV instead of always turning on the entire surround system, but again I don't know if that's the case.

I wouldn't set it up that way this time around.

Chris, I suspect that you are right... a lot of setups are done that way (source to display direct) to eliminate the "hassle" of turning on / controlling other "stuff" when "someone" in the family only wants to watch tv or such. But I am surprised by the poster's "surprise" to find this out.... didn't he "sees" this when he had to "switch" to different hdmi inputs on the display. Having said that maybe they were using the "auto sense" feature on the display to "automagically" switch to the "newly power" source device. Of course, you usually get to buy more / longer cables this way also.... but that why people hire "installers" so they don't have to worry about "anything".

It is also worth mentioning, though I think it would be unlikely, that some receivers do clip the video range, and that could be avoided by going directly to the display(I don't know if this is the case with your receiver). I would be very surprised if any integration company would design something because of that, unless you were quite picky about video and had also purchased ISF calibration services or the like.

If anything, the likely motivation is either sell more cabling ($$) or simply a lingering legacy practice of not running analog video through the receiver (which often may have caused problems/degraded the signal back in analog days. And as I just mentioned, occassionally with digital too, but a slightly more obscure and for most people not significant issue).

Of course, my "analysis" was too harsh and I am sorry... probably a spill over from helping a few "friends" get out of "setups" that others have "helped" with in their "blind faith". But certainly your current setup could allow you to just turn on the source component and TV and watch "something" without the rest.

Anyways, as Chris mentioned, I think that they might have did you a "dis-service" with the way they hooked up your receiver that would have given you access to all the audio decoders that it has to offer. Of course, at the time (two years ago), the choice was limited at the source.... and still really hasn't changed.

Your "other problem" is that the receiver has only 2 hdmi inputs which might have left them "scratching their heads" for a "simple setup" with a need for 3 hdmi's.... this probably would have required an "extra order of complexity" to get going and maybe not reliable. You would have needed a multiport hdmi switch to feed towards your receiver. Depending on the "luck of the draw", they might have had significant "play nice issues" trying to get all source components, external hdmi switch, the receiver (internal hdmi switch), and TV to function reliably.... which you could probably get a view in this forum that people have having issues with similar setups.

Anyways, depending on what your "desires" are... best sound, best video, "best period"... types of components, number of sources, receiver, display(s).... your new setup may or may not "follow" your old..... BUT back to your original question, I would think that most people's setup that have "hdmi capable" receivers don't "directly cable" their source(s) to their display... primarily because this usually results in a "bypass" of the multichannel decoders that are available in the receiver for the "best" sound reproduction.... kind of a waste. Having said that, the only source that utilizes those is a BD player so there are ways around this.... AND in your case, your receiver is capable of analog audio in... SO, depending on your BD player (IF it has analog audio outs), they might have wired your setup to allow the BD player to fully decode the audio (ie. up to 7.1 channels) and send it to your receiver in analog. IF that is the case, then your setup is "just as good".... without the added complexity of "multi hdmi switching / routing".