<<Hehehe...creative MUTE solution. But I would still need to manually turn the volume of the TV all the way down when in surround mode. Not bad though.>>

Not so. Each button has a normal mode and a "shift" mode (you access the shift mode by pressing the SETUP - green P - button before pressing the button. When you assign a ne function to a button (using adv codes or learning) the original function is still on the shift version (unless you program something there).

So, you could still use shift/mute to work the original mute function, thus turning off the TV sound in surround mode. This assumes that the volume controls are set to punch-thru to the TV, if this isn't the case, you could always program the TV's mute button to the shift/mute key and program the 'double' mute function to the normal mute key.

Does that make any sense?
Rob.