Im trying to build a home theater pc and I had a few questions regarding digital video/audio connections.

1. If I have an HD-DVD drive or Blu-Ray drive and a video card with HDMI output (and HDCP compatible) will it actually output at 1080p?

2. Assuming 1 is true, there will be no audio in the signal. Given that, what is the best way to get the digital audio out to some sort of speakers?
2.5. I figure that the solution would be to hook up to some sort of amp/receiver connected to a 7.1 speaker config. Any recommendations on this?

3. Related to this, how do you sync the audio and video since they are coming out of different processors on the pc AND different processors at the output end (video direct to tv, audio through a processor)?

4. Is there a way to pass the output of the digital audio into the HDMI cable synced up, so that the tv can output the audio directly from the HDMI cable (using some sort of processor)?

5. Slightly related ... if I have audio + video coming from a source using HDMI, can I split out the audio (using some sort of processor)?


Thanks for any help ... sorry for all the questions, but HDMI does not seem to be very user friendly ...