How do I hook up multiple units to a Sound Bar?

Samsung TV and Sound Bar Connection Question?

• Bought a Samsung 55'' Tv (UN55D8000). Looking to get the matching sound bar (HW-D551ZA). I just built a new house and mounted my TV above my mantle on the rock fireplace. All the HDMI cords are ran from the fireplace to the office. I was hoping to set the sound bar on the mantle, just under the bottom of the tv, but do not want all the fat hdmi cords in view. I believe it says that you plug your Blu ray player, ps3, xbox etc into the sound bar and run a hdmi from sound bar to tv. Is it possible to hook my blu ray player, cable box and my other stuff directly into my tv and run a hdmi or optical cord from tv to sound bar? this would eliminate the fat HDMI cords from my view and just have smaller, and more importantly, easily hide-able cords to deal with? do i lose sound quality? break it down for me please! I am a dummy when it comes to home theater. Thanks!

• Answer:

  Yes, you could plug everything into your TV and then run an optical from the TV's output to the soundbar's input. All your audio that's going into the TV will feed into the soundbar.