14 speakers hooked up to home theater reciever,shuts off .5 vol

Yes, you will need a Surround Sound Processor to power the speakers.

Hook all the positive and negative wires correctly and read on the speakers and make sure you have them all in the right spot and if that doesnt help its probably because the reciever is maxed out wich is triggering a kill switch wich some recievers have as a safety feature so you dont blow your speakers

Perhaps the Direct TV box menus would shed some light on why it's sending PCM stereo instead of Dolby Digital 5.1.

Yes this can be done. You have several options for audio hookup. Stereo 2-channel (white and red) RCA cables, digital audio (optical or coaxial) or HDMI. Your home theater must have the inputs available such as optical, coaxial etc. Typically the stereo 2-channel RCA is the simple way. Just connect from the Bluray audio outputs to the Home theater inputs (white and red) for stereo sound. Select the input on the home theater. For Dolby Digital 5.1 use optical digital audio cable (black port) or coaxial (orange RCA port) from Bluray to similar home theater input.

I'll buy it off you for $10. Go upgrade to Sony or Samsung. They're better.

try removing all the speaker cables and power back on, a loopback causes this same effect.

You can run red and white from tv out to in on reciever, or optical out tfrom tv to in on reciever or digital coax audio from tv out to in on reciever, depending on which connections you have. then you would put your reciever on aux to hear tv through surround system. Also if you have a cable box or satellite box you can run the audio from that box to the input on surround system.

Hope this helps.

The easiest way to proceed is by using RCA cables (the red, white, yellow) to connect the cable box.

Perhaps you might go on line to the Yamaha site and seek a manual for your CT-810. Yamaha should have a PFD Manual that can be opened with Adobe Reader. Check it out.