My television (Toshiba 40RV525U) has L/R analog audio output jacks that I've connected to one of the inputs on my receiver. I discovered quite by accident that I can get some excellent surround sound from two-channel sources by turning on what Toshiba refers to as an "advanced audio" feature called Q Sound.

Our local PBS station, for example, broadcasts in HD, but the audio is not Dolby Digital 5.1. Nevertheless, I can get excellent surround sound by piping the 2-channel analog audio into my receiver where it goes through the Dolby ProLogic processor. The same is true of our Fox Sports Houston cable channel that broadcasts the Astros games.

Even in these cases, the center channel sounds better than the phantom.

You're right in that it did take a few weeks to get used to it, but it's always sounded better to me from day one.

Q-Sound is just faking the surround information - fooling the Pro Logic decoder into thinking things should be routed to channels that they normally wouldn't be... kind of giving you a "6-channel stereo" effect, like a DSP mode.

When I turn the Q Sound off, the surround effects diminish almost entirely. If the source is actually intended to be sent to a Pro Logic decoder, things might be different, but I haven't had the opportunity to check that out.

Well, if the stereo program source isn't encoded in Pro Logic, then there was no surround material intended in the first place. :-)

I finally got around to upgrading my receiver. I replaced my 10-year old Sony STR-DE635 with a Denon AVR-591. What a difference! After auto-calibrating with the included microphone, it sounds like I've upgraded all my speakers!

Any doubts I had about the Sony BDP-S500 blu-ray player outputting dts-HD Master Audio have been put to rest. It will bitstream (and decode) dts-HD High Resolution audio, but all I get is dts (the core) from a BD with dts-HD Master Audio.

Even so, the audio is awesome. Watched "Harry Brown" last night, which has some very nice surround sound effects, and it blew me away. As I said, it was as if I'd upgraded all my speakers.

Now I'd like to replace the blu-ray player with one that will boot up faster. The S500 takes a long time to power up. Only then can I eject the tray to insert the disc. And then it takes a long time to load the disc, especially if it's a blu-ray disc.

Can anyone recommend a replacement? The S500 upscales DVD's nicely, but that's about the only thing I like about it. Having analog outputs is no longer a desire.

Wish I could help - but I have a Sony 550 from a few years ago and a PS3 from even more years ago and I haven't been keeping up with current BD player performance!

I imagine the 550 is as slow as the 500. I've taken to loading discs early. Like last night I put a DVD in the player, and left it on all night. Today it's ready ... the disc has booted up, played through all the previews, and loaded the menu.  ;-)