[noggin]

That's not true. I get surround from pc and roku just fine by connecting directly to the TV and using ARC. Connecting directly to the receiver requires the input to always change on the receiver.

Though ARC is limited to lossy DD/DD+ (and I think DTS - though not sure about that) - and doesn't support HD Audio as it uses a different path to send audio the 'wrong way' down an HDMI cable and thus can't use the regular path used for HD Audio travelling the 'right way' down an HDMI cable. This is probably not an issue for the Nexus Player - but it could be for other solutions.

ARC is really there for Smart TV applications and the internal TV tuners in TVs to be be able to route their audio back to an AVR down the cable that the AVR feeds the TV with. Its not optimal to route audio from other HDMI sources via the TV rather than directly into an AVR.