Homedad: thanks for confirming.
JohnK: thanks for clarifying why Toslink won't work.
Pickupmykeys: Thanks for the tip on calibrating...sounds like fun and I've never done it before. As for the articles, I read one in it's entirety but the other had so many pages I didn't get through it all.
From Bob P.'s article, it seems like when he wrote that, no players were decoding DTS-HD MA. But now, with the likes of the Toshiba A35, which per their website decodes both lossless formats, and is HDMI 1.3, I don't understand why it wouldn't work. Maybe the answer was in the other article and will just require a free evening to read through it all. Thanks for the help.