Only if you want both HDMI audio and video. It is easy enough to hook the TV directly to the DVD player for HDMI video and use coax or toslink for the audio straight to the receiver. Only thing to watch out for is if the DVD player disables the other outputs when outputing HDMI. My DVD will either output HDMI OR component video not both, but will output analog, coax, toslink and HDMI audio at the same time.