Your TV is nothing to be ashamed of. That's for sure. I'm about 9 feet away from my 50". That is right on the border of needing a bigger monitor. But oh well. It will do.

On the toslink- Hell, I'm not even sure anymore. I've read so much since yesterday it has given me a headache.
Right now I am watching Matrix Reloaded via toslink in Dolby TrueHD sound. The Toshiba XA-2 is set to PCM, not bitstream. And it sounds great. But it may be downmixed. I'm going to let someone else figure this out. Maybe erock1 knows.

Stealth X, sorry we kind of forgot about you :>( We got so tied up in this technical stuff. Instead of me outlining it here, just read this thread in the AVS X Box Area, under 360 HD DVD Update. I believe all your questions will be answered in full here. I'm not trying to cop out, it's just that I really do not know anything about the X Box or other games consoles.

Here's the link: [Link: avsforum.com]

Here's a bit of the thread to give you an idea:
Q: What is this DTS output they are talking about? What does the HD-DVD add-on currently do with the TrueHD and DD+ soundtracks?

I believe with the standalone players, if you are outputting DD+ or TrueHD through optical, it gets transcoded to a 1.5 MBps DTS stream. Is that what the add-on will be able to do after the update?

A: Previously, everything was converted to Dolby Digital... after the update, you'll have the option to transcode to (higher bitrate) DTS, like your standalone player example.

Good luck,
Erock

yeah, i could have gotten the same unit as you for $500 less than i paid for mine, but i couldnt tell a difference side by side, and with the extra 10" it was an easy decision. also i'm 10-12 ft depending on if i'm reclined or not, and given my last tv was an RPTV it was closer to my viewing postion (opposed to the plasma now mounted on the wall), so again the larger size was a must.

thanks alot erock. i'll have to check out that link later when i'm at home (have very restricted access at work). i'll also have to have another look at my audio options, but i could swear by options are either DD or DD with mindows media or something like that.... and the xbox does its downlaods automatically so i'm wondering why i now dont have a DTS option....??