[Wayde]

Hey ewarren, welcome to the shack!

here's my .02 cents, there might be someone of more authority than I to speak on this but I'm a real miser and always look for a budget.

Personally... I wouldn't feel the need to upgrade that older Denon receiver. It's my philosophy to never upgrade unless you have a specific justifiable reason.

Without knowing anything about Mr. Denon's capabilities I will assume it's a good receiver and you're happy with its ability to light up your speakers. I'll also assume it has at least analogue 5.1 inputs and it doesn't have HDMI 1.3a in/outs (required to receive the hi-res audio formats in digital) so it is also probably without the ability to decode TrueHD or DTS-HD.

But, the Denon still has all you need to enjoy the uncompressed hi-res audio formats with a Samsung BD-UP5000.

If you got your hands on Samsung's BD-UP5000, since it's capable of decoding the new audio formats, all you have to do is output sound from the playback device using analogue to your receiver and presto you're in!

When using the analogue inputs on any receiver you're alleviating it of decoding duties, those are passed on to the playback device.

I personally don't worry about that old orthodoxy that says passing signals in analogue contributes to degradtation of sound quality. I believe decoding at playback and sending audio via analogue to the amp is JUST AS good as sending it digitally from the playback device to be decoded at the a/v receiver/amp. It really depends on which device has better DACs - in this case when it comes to the hi-res audio formats that would be the playback device.

Hope this helps