Sony BDP-S350 sound and cable help needed

[admin_exported]

Hi,

I am looking at getting the Sony bdp-s350 very soon but i can't find the help i need anywhere about the sound setup options.

Basically I have a 4 year old Pioneer DCS-222 home cinema system with optical input which is what i will use for the sound, but would the DTS or DolbyDigital decoder be able to decode the Blu-Ray players sound (via optical) to the same quality of 5.1 surround sound compared with what the cinema system can directly from DVD's it plays itself ?

I know it won't be to the same quality of HD Master audio or DolbyTrueHD but i don't wan't to loose any sound quality from what i already get from DVD's.
I know this probably sounds really stupid but the Pioneer isn't a modern cinema system and doesn't even have hdmi up-scaling because of it's age.

Another thing is i have heard that 32D3000 only outputs 2.0 sound through the optical out but surely if the sound was running from the s350 through the hdmi cable at 5.1chls to the bravia, wouldn't the bravia output exactly what it recieves through the optical out ? thus i could use the one optical cable to output all sound from the tv to the cinema system instead of from each device plugged into it

Also im looking to spend a maximum of £35 on a good HDMI cable to run from the bdp-s350 to my t.v (Sony 32D3000) and have come accross a Fisual Hollywood Silver Star hdmi cable which appears to be increadible spec for the price (£34.99 from audiovisualonline) but notice there are no What-hifi reviews for any Fisual cables, would there be any upcoming reviews of this make and type of cable ? or if anyone has any experience of this cable please let me know (i have got a Fisual vga cable and it is better than a high-end belkin vga which cost 3 times more than the fisual !) but i don't know which hdmi to choose between the old £35 QED hdmi-p or the Fisual (also it's SRP is £59.99)

Sorry for going on and on, but any help will be greatly appreciated to help solve my problems, Thank You !

 

[Andrew Everard]

The Pioneer will be able to decode the basic DD/DTS soundtracks on BDs no problem, and should sound as good as DVDs played on its internal transport.

The sound going to the TV via HDMI will probably be set to two channel by the handshake between the two, and so there's no real advantage going via the TV's output to the Pioneer system.

Best to use the TV digital output only to feed audio from the TV tuner stage into the system. It'll be in stereo, but the Pioneer's Pro-Logic decoder should be able to get some semblance of surround from it on some programmes, notably movies, which may well have Dolby Surround matrixed into the original stereo soundtrack.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Optical from Sony BD player to your Pioneer box will give you DTS or Dolby Digital no problem. Hdmi from screen to BD player will be fine for picture. The hdmi cable that you mention will be fine but what about this?

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andrew Everard:
The Pioneer will be able to decode the basic DD/DTS soundtracks on BDs no problem, and should sound as good as DVDs played on its internal transport.

The sound going to the TV via HDMI will probably be set to two channel by the handshake between the two, and so there's no real advantage going via the TV's output to the Pioneer system.

Best to use the TV digital output only to feed audio from the TV tuner stage into the system. It'll be in stereo, but the Pioneer's Pro-Logic decoder should be able to get some semblance of surround from it on some programmes, notably movies, which may well have Dolby Surround matrixed into the original stereo soundtrack.

You keep beating me!