First, a hello and thanks to anyone who can help me out. Starting basically from scratch here, and planning a HT setup. Please dont judge me for being the dumb guy willing to spend money. I have indeed waited many years for this oppurtunity, and want to do it right.

I have a room 27' by 13' with 90" ceiling. (Basement) 3 smaller windows.

My wish list is:

1) $1000-1500 avr (Pioneer Elite vsx 94 or similar) I want it to have Sirius, multiple zone capability.
2) $1800-2300 hd projector and screen (80"-100" view)
3) $5000-7500 5.1 speaker set-up. (Def tech or Psb or similiar) with proper avr to run. Preamp????? I will use HT 50-50 for music and movies.
4) PS3 for gaming and blu-ray player.
5) HTPC set up of some-kind (really need help here) I want to use it both as pvr and library of music/movies. Willing to spend $2000 or so for this piece. I am hoping I can use it in conjunction with my Bell 9200 pvr. Obvisiouly, surf the net and stream internet audio,etc also would be cool.

Therefore, my budget is $9800 to $12800 (canadian) My main reason for using your help is that I am from a small market city with no stores carrying quality product. I am three hours away from Calgary, and could find anything there, but before I drive there, I want my wish list finalized.

The single biggest concern is compatibility. I will work on set-up etc and figure that out, I just want to make sure all the products will work together.

Thanks so much.

Your budget is nicely sized. Never the less, there are many possible responses to your queries for gear.

As for front projections, may I sugest ths JVC HD-1
http://tv.jvc.com/product.jsp?pathId=140&modelId=MODL027863
My rptv is a JVC 61FN97 based on the same LCoS H-DILA technology in the front projection products.

You might want to be more patient before you spend the money. :) Throwing a lot of cash at something does not nessecarrily get you what you want.

1) Check out the Onkyo SR876. These have excellent audio and video calibration options plus exceptional video upconversion circuitry. It also has a 2nd zone and a good bit of power for HT. You should be able to easily find them for under $1500. A buddy of mine just got his for $1200 so factor in the CDN taxes...
2) Make sure that you can darken the room significantly (no sunlight). Sunlight will kill the projected image (much more than a plasma or other direct-view display).
3) Since you live in Canada, definitely look at some of the larger PSB and Paradigm speaker setups. I would strongly suggest that you consider a monitor-sized front speaker (2 mid drivers + a tweeter) + an exceptional subwoofer(s) instead of getting a pair of large tower speakers + so-so subwoofer. Note that many top performing subs are not sold in dealers (they are Internet direct).
4) Good choice. You will be able to stream video and audio off any home media server with this unit. Upgrading the HDD to a larger size is super-easy and supported by Sony.
5) For the library, you'll want to get a couple of terabyte drives. If redundancy is important to you (i.e. HDD crash and data loss would be catastrophic) then go with a RAID 5 or similar setup. Set it up as a media server so the PS3 can see all the content. As for the rest: What specifically are you trying to record? Consider getting a small cheap computer to run bit torrent and grab your popular programs that way (assuming you have high speed internet where you live). You may also want to consider replacing your Bell PVR with 1-2 TivoHD units (using cable cards). Each Tivo can record 2 programs at once (while playing back any content). You will not be able to interactively order PPV events or use OnDemand but frankly I have not missed either of those. Tivo uses Amazon unbox and you can get your PPV and OnDemand fix that way.

Plan on spending 1-2 days auditioning various equipment at the stores in Calgary. Everyone will have suggestions but you will want to buy what sounds and looks good to you. Good luck!

I 100% agree that you should audition some audio when in Calgary. I would make a trip of it, maybe catch a Flames game and get some serious listening time in during the day. Your budget will get you a great setup, but you may find that your wants are a bit lower or higher priced and listening will really get you to where you want to be.

Thanks guys.

I just want to chime in on the HTPC. It seems like you are looking for a pre-built machine. Is that because you are not really proficient building and setting up PC's? If that is the case, you may want to rethink the HTPC. They are fantastic for what they do, but they can also be a real PITA to get working correctly and reliably. You should really spend a lot of time in the HTPC forum to get a feel for how they work. You should also look to build two seperate PC's, one server and one client. If you try to do it all in one, you are probably going to end up with a big loud box that is going to cause problems with overheating

I'm using a Mac Mini, running Windows Vista Media Center, for my HTPC, and I love it. I use a Tivo S3 for DVR, so the WMC is only for playing MP3s, playing ripped DVDs and other such things where the data comes from my separate home server. If you don't yet have a separate server, I'd throw $1200 at the server (with lots of disk), and then $800 at a Mac Mini + Windows. All you need in the Mini is a memory upgrade to 2 GB, the low-end hard drive and CPU is good enough.

The only draw-back is that the Mac Mini will NOT play back HD content (ripped blu-rays and the like). The reason is that the CPU + GPU combination just isn't powerful enough. However, I have a PS/3 and an Xbox 360 for my HD needs, so that works out OK. In fact, I could probably set up media sharing on my server so that the PS/3 (or Xbox) could do all the server playback I needed, and the PS/3 has a web browser, too, so a HTPC isn't strictly necessary -- but I prefer the UI and capabilities of WMC.

I had a similar budget to yours. I got a Sony STR-DA5200ES, which was a mistake. If I were to buy again, I'd probably buy a Denon 3000 series (3808? something like that) or perhaps a Yamaha.
For speakers, I went with a 6.1 system based on Genelec 8040 speakers and a 7071 sub. It does clean, crisp, clear and accurate sound from 19 Hz to 20,000 Hz up to about 112 dB at my 8 foot listening distance, which is pretty much the max distance for this system. The reason to go with (powered) near-field monitors instead of regular speakers was that they have better directivity, and I have some large windows that can't have absorbtion panels on the walls. Plus I love the detail and sound of Genelecs in general...

A slightly cheaper, but almost as good set-up using powered speakers and sub is using Mackie HR824 speakers (6 or 7) and a SW1801 subwoofer. New, that will run you at about $6,000 and gives you a lot of sound for the money. Note that, when using powered monitors, you will use the "pre out" from your AVR, and won't actually use the built-in amplifier. This means you could use a pre-amp instead of the AVR, if you can find one that does HDMI and upscaling and what else you need. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything under $2,000, so it was more economical to just go with an AVR. Similarly, if you go with an AVR, you won't need a pre.

Finally, I ended up cladding the entire front wall in 4" insulation, covered by 2" 703 board, covered by a dark olive green sack weave, which gives me pretty good bass trapping and echo control, without being at all obviously visible (which was a WAF issue).

So, that's my suggestions. Feel free to ignore them as you see fit :-)

then $800 at a Mac Mini + Windows. All you need in the Mini is a memory upgrade to 2 GB, the low-end hard drive and CPU is good enough.

The only draw-back is that the Mac Mini will NOT play back HD content (ripped blu-rays and the like).

For $800 you can easliy build a non-Mac HTPC that will play Blu-Ray as well. But the OP would need to know how to build it. I would love to see a MAC that can play Blu-Ray, but right now it simply is not possible, and I wouldn't bother with an HTPC without it

I should have added that I recently got rid of my HTPC because the PS3 did everything that I needed in the theater. It pulls down video and audio from my media server and plays most formats straight off a disc. The HTPC was certainly more versatile but it was a constant pain in terms of maintenance. I have a separate (tower) computer back in the home office that I use as my server and ripping station (along with any encoding tasks). With the latest gen of equipment (Tivos that can pull programs from computers and each other, PS3s that can interface to any media server & surf the web, etc.) the average user's need for a HTPC has greatly diminished.

Thanks a lot on the HTPC input.

I am not in any way a builder. I wish I could just be a buyer of a unit that did what I wanted it to do. It is ridiculous that there isnt. (at least a user friendly reliable one)

Really, a music/pvr unit doesnt sound too complicated.

I am mostly concerned to have a music server, so I will get a ps3 for that, and just use my bell pvr for now.

Thanks again all!