I just hope that HDMI receivers and HTS drop in price by the time Wii U launch, in my country at least the norm for HTS is using optical/analog outputs, a few of them have both, HDMI input and output, and cost a lot money.S/PDIF doesn't have the bandwidth for uncompressed six channel audio. Nintendo would need to add Dolby or DTS encoding, which means worse quality at a higher price. Won't happen. Might as well stick with ProLogic for those who have old surround receivers.
I think it's better connect the optical cable output direct to your device (BR Player/360)I don't know much about audio stuff, but I just have my home theater connected to my TV via optical cable. This way I can use my home theater speakers and sub when I use my TV, Xbox, and Bluray player. Is there something that I should be aware of by doing this instead of connecting optical cables into each of my devices?
I did the same as you (TV acting as input/output), but then there's not channel separation, for some reason you lost channel separation when the audio output is from your TV.