Whats the advantage of connecting your consoles to your amplifier/receiver through HDMI and then with another HDMI cable to your TV as opposed to connect the consoles directly to the tv and then with optic cables to the amplifier/receiver? My tv is a 40" Samsung UE40C8705 LED 3D TV and my consoles are ps3, xbox360 and Wii. I am currently trying to find a surround sound solution that will utilize all of the various machines capabilities. Any help much appreciated.
Well. to start with every connection and circuit causes quality loss and to end with optical to the amp is not much better than composite.
For best fidelity out of the speakers you want the most lossless connection available from the source direct to the amp for processing. Currently the best transport method in todays common components is HDMI.
That's not to say you would even notice a big difference and long before they had HDMI folks had hi fidelity systems but today there is much more detail and traffic being sent through the wires and congestion causes noise and degridation.
Compare it to how we used to play audio off vinyl through a needle to the amplifier and now we have digital media with laser readers and digital processing...