How do I get 5.1 surround sound out of my ps3 slim?

What kind of surround sound system should I buy to get optimal sound out of my PS3 Blue Ray/TV?

• I just bought an Insignia 42" LCD 1080p tv to display my PS3 gaming and Blue Ray videos. I was just wondering what surround sound system would be best to hook up to this kind of system? I don't have a very large living space so I'm not apposed to 2.1 systems or even sound bars. My next question is how would I go about hooking that system up to get HD sound quality to be played from both my TV and my PS3? What would be the order of operations I would take to hook them all up? (Ex. HDMI from PS3 to TV>TV audio out to reciever... etc.) Thanks.

• Answer:

  You want to steer away from a HTIaB (home theater in a box). Most of them don't have digital audio inputs. The convenience of getting the speakers and everything together is overshadowed by the poor build quality and flexibility of these systems. Look towards a nice modern Onkyo receiver with HDMI switching and optical audio inputs. Most new Onkyos are capable of uncompressed DD and DTS. For speakers find the ones that sound best to you. Good names to look for are Boston Acoustic, Paradigm, maybe even JBL (stay away from Bose). You want to use the optical digital audio output from the PS3 connected directly to the surround receiver. Many times the digital output from the TV will only yield two channel PCM audio, not uncompressed 5.1 surround, when obtaining it's audio signal from an HDMI cable. Likewise, to get the best possible sound from your TV, hook up whatever digital output it has to the digital input of the TV audio input of the receiver.