I recently bought a new home cinema system the Samsung HT-E5550. The blu-ray player comes with 2 HDMI inputs which i thought great i can attach my media player and do away with optical cables. I assumed that HDMI could pass video and 5.1 audio signals to the home cinema system. It seems however that the sound using only the HDMI is only stereo and if you want 5.1 you still need an optical cable attached. Is that correct or are there other changes i need to make to get 5.1 from the HDMI input?

By the way the Samsung system is very good and well priced at the moment at 17,000 baht or less.

You may be asking the wrong question.

Looking that the technical specs for the Samsung HT-E5550

it should handle 5.1

See page 22 of the user manual.

The question is does the BD player pass the 5.1 via the hdmi

Mind you I will be surprised if it does not.

I suggest you check the BD player settings and manual first.

Yes the BD player should have a menu option for HDMI passthrough or something similar. Would probably be set as "PCM" by default