Re:Well I think they may be dead (Score 1)

You don't need a new receiver to take advantage of the new surround formats such as TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, and DTS-HD. All of the HD-DVD players contain decoders in them that will decode these surround formats and output them via analog 5.1, optical, digital coax, or HDMI. Many receivers today have at least one of those connections, HDMI being the newest and more expensive. You can then either overlay post processing if you like (Such as THX surround processing) or simply leave the signal as-is. There is no need to have two decoders doing the same thing.
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/dvd/product.asp?model= hd-a1