mmonaco27 said:
My biggest problem is that I need to conrol all devices from the standard comcast digital cable remote. I was trying to pass all the audio through the TV so it would be easy to control audio through one device. If I connect the DVD and Cable Box directly to the receiver, I don't think I can use the comcast remote to control the audio.
If you connect all of the audio directly to the TV then you are limited to using the TV speakers and you obviously cannot have surround sound from two tiny speakers.
If you were to use analog connections (the red/white RCA) to the receiver then you cannot get 'true' surround sound from a digital format like Dolby Digital or DTS but the receiver will likely have matrix decoders like ProLogic II that can turn stereo into 5.1 - it will just be slightly different from the original 5.1 discrete channels of DD or DTS.
Your receiver has two optical inputs and both the cable box and dvd player have optical outputs and that is how you should connect them to the receiver (of course you will need 5.1 speakers connected to the receiver if you actually want to hear the sound). I wouldn't bother with HDMI - just use component video connections to the receiver so the receiver can switch between sources easily. You could connect the video straight to the TV but you then have to change the input on the TV.
Remotes supplied by cable companies are low end pre-programmed remotes and rarely cover a wide variety of equipment. Crippling the system in order to use the Comcast remote is not going to be very satisfactory. You should hook up all the components in the normal way using the optical cables and pick up a real universal remote to solve the remote control problem.
