Bento Box Bits of everything

DD, finally

I finally have a proper audio set up. For the longest time I had the TV in the nook and the two speakers off to the sides straddling the fireplace. With prodding and advice from friends I've relocated the TV onto the fireplace (since I don't use it anyway) and also added a center channel since everything is centered now. It was taking me awhile to figure out why my receiver wasn't recognizing the audio source as Dolby Digital even though I knew the PS3 was capable of it. Turns out it's because:

1. Previously I had my TV feeding the receiver through the optical audio-out port. I did it this way because I could plug in multiple consoles to the TV and leave it on one input on the receiver. Turns out that when using audio-out on TVs, it will only output as 2-channel. I think this has to do with anti-piracy measures maybe.
2. PS3 needed to be directly connected to the receiver and also have its settings changed to output to only the optical connection and I had to set settings on it so that it outputs in Dolby Digital and all those other digital audio codecs.

I'm blown away by movies on the 3.1 setup and how only dialog comes through the center channel. Can't believe it's taken me this long to figure it out. Next steps are to route the wires so it's not a mess, find a way to raise the TV 6-8", and figure out how to get digital output from the other consoles.

Living Room Beta configuration

Edit: Wow, reading about Dolby TrueHD and how it's the lossless standard vs the compressed lossy Dolby Digital and Dolby DTS makes my head spin. Apparently Dolby TrueHD audio can only be heard via hdmi-capable receivers since only hdmi can support the bandwidth required. But there's a debate in the audiophile world about whether people can even tell the difference, and how it all depends on the source material anyway. Too cheap to buy a new receiver so I'm sticking with the cheapest option.