Toffees fan:ÿI have the same BD and Amp combination and found myself getting more and more frustrated as the amp didn't seem to be able to playback HD soundtracks.
The key to resolving the problem was to set the component resolution on the BD35 to higher than 720p which meant the 24000 then recognised the HD audio codecs.
Hope this helps.ÿ
You're being slightly harsh on the amp there, it can only decode what the BD player sends to it and with the BD35 (and I believe a number of other players) if you don't tell the BD player to send HD *video* it won't output HD *audio* either, and there's nothing the amp can do about that, it's the player's fault.
Going back to original question, I was of the impression that it shouldn't make any difference which device does the decoding (because of the nature of how TrueHD and DTSMA package the soundtrack), however it's generally regarded as better to allow the amp to do the decoding.