New Processors passing HD Sound?

Thanks for the responses so far. It looks like Denon has come out with several receivers as well - not sure what I'll get running "pre-out" to my amp.
Px25: That's what I originally thought as well, but the HD signal is ONLY passed thru the HDMI cable. In other words, all you get from 5.1 is 5.1, not HD sound, as it has been explained to me by several pretty prominent engineer-types.

I'm not sure I follow what you're hearing from these engineer-types. The 6-channel discrete out should be just as lossless as the HDMI, with the only difference being that it's being done at the player instead of the processor (after being transcoded to LPCM I'd assume?).

What are they saying the significant difference is?

Hudsonhawk: I'm certainly not an engineer, nor do I pretend to totally understand this. What they told me is that the player will only send HD sound thru the HDMI port, not the 5.1 out. Apparently that's how it is designed, maybe for copy-protection or something similar - I'm not sure - just frustrated. There is an explanatory chart on p. 48 of the s2000es manual, which is viewable on Sony's site (with a little digging) that explains what some of the outputs are. ALthough I don't understand all of it, it seems to confirm that the HDMI is the only source for HD sound from the piece.

Meanwhile, friends are telling me to just be patient, as there will undoubtedly soon be processors coming to market to deal with this situation (as there are already receivers surfacing from Sony, Denon and Onkyo). I guess the next several months, and especially CES in January, will be full of new HD processors as the big players weigh into this new "market" segment.

Thanks again for your responses to this point - additional comments are also welcome (especially if you're a Sony BR engineer).

Can someone please explain HD sound ?

Thank you.

My guess is that they were talking about the Toslink / Coax out, not the 6 channel discrete output.

6 channel discrete output will pass the lossless audio encoded on some Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs; because of bandwidth issues, Toslink and Coax can only handle lossy Dolby Digital / DTS.