Having purchased a all in one surround sound system that I'm very very happy with (samsung ht-tx35) i'd like to know what sort of surround sound is broadcast and piped to us via HC?

I know Sky / BBC HD views are getting 5.1, but what do we get at the moment??

As we only have phono L & R out via scart, I presume we are getting a muxed surround sound like Dolby... but it would be good to know...

And in the future, will the the STB give me optical out to feed into my system?

Looking forward to the new STB too, can't wait for a good PVR and some nice HD content!

Currently you just get stereo via the scart. Nothing more, nothing less.

Huh?

I'm sure we've been getting SOME kinda surround sound via analogue for years?

Dolby surround is encoded into the L R stereo mix and then decoded by the amp..

So we don't get ANYTHING.. ?? thats crap!!

You may get Dolby Stereo/ProLogic if the originating source has it but it won't be on everything.

Only Sky+ and V+ currently broadcast multi channel audio. Cable, Freeview, Sky SD, Homechoice etc all broadcast Stereo - it's upto the broadcaster if they use a Dolby Surround source on that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro-Logic has specifics.