The sound on the Bravia is pretty good, though IMO I don't think 2.1ch is not gonna cut it in the near future! More & more games are coming out with dedicated 5.1ch for the game with great benefits. Even PSN games have support 5.1ch!
But if you really just want 2.1, u won't really need a receiver & it's won't greatly improve the sound compared to ur Bravia. Except for more oomph (via sub-woofer!)
As for the HDMI connections, if you connect your PS3 directly to the receiver then u'll get optimum sound straight out. If it's directly connected to ur tv it may need calibration with the sound?? And use up more HDMI ports. Nothing major though.
Here's a tip: I'd hold on a bit and wait for all the end of financial year sales in both commercial retailers & specialists! Also, AV specialists sell second-hand sound systems for good price and would not sell those if they were in bad conditions! (think of them as luxury car re-sellers ie. Audi, BMW, Mercs, etc.)
As for the Yamaha, real output power produced will actually considerably less than 90w per channel! Don't really know how to explain this properly, but if you take the wattage output written on the back of the receiver near where the power plug goes in to & devide it by 5 (as in a 5.1ch receiver)...you'll actually get less than 90w per channel! That's because it can only output the maximum power if you're only using 1 channel, otherwise it's just sharing 5 speaker power out of the receiver!
21/05/2008
The Matrix, Victoria