Wiring my new HDTV/AVR

[marc3312]

This is quite possibly a stupid question but I've been googling for a bit now and haven't found a definitive answer to it yet.

I've recently purchase a new Panasonic HDTV and I'm trying to figure out how best to wire it with HDMI. For simplicity, here are the components involved in my home theatre:

Panasonic HDTV (3 HDMI inputs, 1 optical digital audio out)
Panasonic Receiver (4 HDMI inputs, 1 optical digital audio in, 1 coax digital audio in, 1 HDMI out)
Rogers/Nextbox HD PVR (1 HDMI out, 1 optical digital audio out, 1 coax digital audio out)
Panasonic Blu-ray (1 HDMI out, 1 optical digital audio out, 1 coax digital audio out)
X-Box 360 (1 HDMI out)

From what I've seen so far, I basically have two options to connect these 4 components:

1) Connect Blu-ray, XBox and PVR to Receiver HDMI inputs. Connect Receiver HMDI output to HDTV HDMI input.
Pros: Best audio quality, Input switch doesn't require navigating TV menus
Cons: Receiver must always be "on", video signal "may" be degraded, can't customize video settings for input (i.e. higher contrast for gaming, "movie" mode for blu-ray, etc)

2) Connect Blu-ray, XBox and PVR to HDTV HDMI inputs. Connect HDTV digital audio output to Receiver input.
Pros: Best video quality, Receiver doesn't have to be on, Can customize video settings to source
Cons: audio quality "may" be degraded, need to use to TV menus to change sources (not a big deal), uses up all my HDMI ports


Are these pros and cons correct? Do I really need to choose between whether I want the "best" video or audio quality? Or is there a third alternative out there that I haven't come across yet?

[57]

With most newer components there is not a huge difference between the calibration of those devices, therefore going "through" the AVR is usually just fine.

There are other options in that you could connect some devices through the AVR and one "odd" device that required a different calibration directly to the TV. The audio connection should be directly to the AVR rather than "through" the TV typically. Here are the relevant FAQs, Posts:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=57741 Useful Post

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17870 Through TV Caveat

Optimization: http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=76161