I've got this Sony 5:1 DVD Home Cinema System, about 5 years old and it appears to be on the way out, i'm looking for a replacement for it.

Been looking around online for a couple of hours and can't find what i'm looking for. What I would like is for it to have two digital optical inputs on, one for my Sky+ and one for my PS3, at the moment I only have my PS3 connected. I have a spare HDMI lead so it would be useful if it could connect to the TV using that.

Thing is Sony seem to have dumped optical inputs on their recent models, and they only have 1 HDMI connection which seems a bit pointless.

Any suggestions on where I could look?

look into separates. If you have a PS3, you have the potential for TrueHD audio up the HDMI from BluRays...the Onkyo 705 is going for £599 and has 3 HDMI inputs and all the future audio formats built in. It also has a plethora of optical & other inputs.

I recently upgraded from my aging Sony DAVS550 all-in-one surround sound system (which only had one optical input) to a Denon 1908 amp (£309) and Canton 80CX speakers (£200) - I'm so far delighted with the results. I'm currrently feeding it a PS3 (via HDMI), Sky HD (via component + optical), and Wii (via component). The Denon upconverts the component inputs to HDMI so I only need the one HDMI lead going to my TV.

As you have a PS3 you don't need an amp that will decode HD audio formats onboard to enjoy HD sound, as the PS3 will decode them itself* and send them as PCM over HDMI to the amp (but the amp will need to accept multichannel PCM over HDMI). In fact the PS3 can't actually bitstream the HD sound to the amp anyway (which is what you would need in order for the amp to do the decoding). So in that way amps like the Onkyo 605 and above will be somewhat redundant - although they will offer more flexibility should you get a separate Bluray player in the future which can bitstream the HD audio tracks.

*The PS3 can't currently decode dts Master Audio (the other lossless compression HD audio codec besides Dolby TrueHD), though it is rumoured/hoped to be on the way in a firmware update. dts Master Audio is generally only found on Fox BluRay's (and in those cases the PS3 just uses the core dts track, which is still pretty good); the majority of BluRays either have PCM uncompressed soundtracks (which the PS3 simply feeds direct to the amp), or Dolby TrueHD (which it decodes and then feeds as PCM).

Amps you might want to consider (and these all assume you would like to take advantage of HD audio from the PS3 as they all accept PCM over HDMI) are:

Sony STR-DG910 (~£270)
Denon 1908 (~£330-£400)
Onkyo 605 (~£350-400)
Marantz SR4002 (~£380)

All of these have at least 2 HDMI inputs (the Sony has 3), though the Onkyo is the only one which has HD audio decoding onboard (not relevant for the PS3 but might be for a future player). I went for the Denon as I spotted it on sale for only £309, though the site I got it from (weymouthhifi) have since put the price back up to £329 - it usually goes for around £400 though so it is still a pretty good price.

Thanks for the reccomendations, given me something to think about, I was struggling to find anything. Still hoping I can get a couple of months out of the old Sony one but not looking good.