Need help hooking up Bose surround sound system - should it go from PS3 to TV to Receiver, or not?

There is no right or wrong way to hook it up as you have described. Either way is fine. It's just that having everything hooked up to the receiver makes it more user friendly in that you don't have to change so many inputs when you have multiple components.

With digital sound you can run it any way you like with pretty much no sound degradation at all. Hook it up either of those ways and you will be fine. Any sound system is going to tell you to hook sound up to it: it's it's job.

either way will work, but if want true "surround" sound from your PS3, then the first method is the way to go. Unless you're using HDMI cable from your playstation to your TV, in which case the second method will work just fine. The reason that the manual suggests the first method is to preserve the purity of the signal. the less devices that the audio signal has to pass through, the less likely signal loss will occur.

I would use the second option:ps3 to TV to bose. the big advantage this has is the TV volume control might work on the audio outputs from the TV as well on the TV speakers. that way if you hit mute on the TV then everything will go silent instead of having to use a second remote when the phone rings. I have HDMI to my TV and then toslink to my $100 5.1 receiver. it sounds great and only uses 2 wires. if you dont have toslink then use coaxial digital.

i have ps3 hooked up with optical cable to Receiver and tv hooked up with hdmi cable to Receiver sounds lovely. i would go with pluggin everything into the reciever then hdmi lead out to tv its the way to go for me.

first i would trade that bose rubbish in! i have it set up in the 2nd method you described, nothing wrong with it and like you said, you can run ps3 audio trough the tv speakers if you want.