Except for having an HDMI connection and HDMI Video switching/1080p capability, what else do I need to look for in a receiver so that it is compatible with a blue-ray player?

Futureshop site mentions features like DTS HD or Dolby True HD for Audio formats in receivers. Is it absolutely necessary?

Interesting question. I did not know the answer myself and had to do some reading.

What to look for in a HDMI receiver: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10166_7-6436407-1.html

Regarding support for audio formats, the basic HDMI receiver will do provided you have a blu-ray player that has "onboard decoding". That means the player itself converts the blu-ray soundtrack to linear PCM, which it can then send to a compatible receiver over its HDMI output. Blu-ray players with onboard decoding can also output soundtracks at their full resolution over multichannel analog outputs, if the player has such outputs.

Anyways, please see if the following link helps: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-13817_7-6462511-4.html

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