Is an optical cable sufficient to get 5.1 sound?

Just hooked up Apple TV for the first time, ran the software update and am playing with it. This is very cool. Was a bit concerned when playing HD trailers they didn’t play in 5.1, but then searched through these forums and found they are not in that format. Haven’t rented a movie yet.
My question is, I'm connecting my ATV to my receiver with an optical digital cable. That’s it re audio. So if the movie supports 5.1, should that be sufficient to generate it?
I’m out of my element here, I kinda do what I'm told when setting this stuff up. On my DVD player, I have both an optical digital cable and a bunch of regular cables for audio front left/front right/center/back left/back right. Not sure why I have all those cables when I have the optical digital one, maybe they’re unnecessary. Just got concerned when I didn’t see analogous inputs on the ATV unit.
Just trying to make sure I've got this correctly setup. FYI, TV is 4 years old, doesn’t’ have HDMI.

Yes, the optical cable will pass 5.1, and that's the better choice than the analog RCA connectors. The HDMI probably does as well, but isn't relevant for you.

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Is an optical cable sufficient to get 5.1 sound?

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