7.1 no. Any 7.1 setup is a "fake" setup more or less. What I mean by this, is that the best you can get is 6.1. What the receiver then does is takes the signal available (5.1 or 6.1 discrete signals (meaning a dedicated signal to each speaker)), and creates it into two "matrix" rear channels, meaning it calculates how the sound would be in the left rear speaker and the right rear speaker if there was a real 7.1 setup and distributes them appropriately. To simplify, it basically either splits the rear center channel of the 6.1 setup, or splits the left channel and the right channel of the 5.1 just to create that "Travelling surround sound effect" from the rear speakers.
Just to show the difference, in a real 6.1 setup playing on a 6.1 system, each speaker gets a dedicated sound specifically allocated to it by the DD (Dolby Digital) ES or DTS EX 6.1 signal. So each the signal has a specific sound to play from each speaker at each time.
Regarding your question about dvds, yes whenever you see a special edition that's marked DD ES or DTS EX that means it has the capability of playing 6.1. There are only a handful or dvds out there.
If you're playing a 5.1 dvd in a 6.1/7.1 system, the same procedure applies as I explained above.
I'm am pretty sure in most of what I have said here though as always I can err somewhere along the lines. Anyone feel free to correct me if you are sure of it. I hope I also made sense, if not feel free to ask more question.
4g63t, those are nice prices. I also got really good prices for my components (10% above cost for tv (roughly 35% markup item), 10% above cost for speakers (~60-65% markup), and the stand and receiver I got for 1/2 cost price (90 days clearance items))
I love working at BB
