I'm gathering information and doing research so I can present the "total plan" to my wife for discussion on whether we use extra money we have now, or we wait until next summer.

The system will serve the following functions: DVD (HD, regular), Cable TV (HD, regular), PC Gaming, Nintendo Wii gaming, Music (CD, mp3). We're not home theater enthusiasts or hobbyists, we just want to enjoy some home entertainment and the more "wow" factor for the buck the better :-).

We're converting a bedroom from an office to home entertainment room. It is 12'4" long and 11'9" wide. There's a closet with the doors removed which is where the components/TV will reside. We have couches that will probably be replaced, and the main one will be about 6'8" away from the TV.

Our budget isn't set in stone (hence the planning and discussions), but I'd like to spend no more than ~4200 for the components, plus whatever cables and other misc things will cost. I have a shelf for the TV already.

Here's the components I've picked or am considering.

HDTV: Samsung HLT5087S

Receivers: Denon AVR-1708 or AVR-1907, Onkyo TX-SR604

Home Theater PC: For DVD/CD, nonHD DVR, MP3, PC gaming; looking at Asus EN8600GTS Silent video card and Hauppauge 150 tuner. Onboard sound, or anything that isn't made by Creative (hate their crappy drivers).

I haven't picked out speakers yet. I have a set of Logitech Z-680's I've been using for PC gaming for a few years now and would like to not have to buy a bunch of speakers right away to save some money. Otherwise, I'm looking at a 5.1 set of AV123 x-series speakers (bookshelf, center, sub) due to the very reasonable price.

The main advice I'm looking for here is on speakers and the receiver. Due to the dimensions of the room I might just go with 5.1 instead of 7.1. When it comes to all the codecs, signal processing and other technologies, I don't really care about going for the omg highest quality, I just want everything to work as expected. I really don't need high volume, since most movie watching and almost all PC gaming will be done with sleeping children in the house. But I do expect to have everything functional - 5.1 (or 7.1) surround for any of the source devices that support it (DVD, Wii, HDDVD, etc).

..and I'm only 2 years old (figuratively speaking) so allow me to make one suggestion...

Spend a lOT of time planning and budgeting for your ROOM first, acoustics, sound molding, sound minimizing whatever you wanna call it-and less time on figuring out what equipment you will buy for the room.

It will pay off in SPADES!!!

I have found out that even the MOST expensive equipment sounds only fair at BEST if the room isn't set up correctly.

My advice to anyone who is where you are now is to seriously think about getting good advice now about sound and acoustics.

Don't wait until you have all that expensive stuff installed and wonder why it doesn't sound like it should and the "wow" factor turns into a "what-the-heck-is-THAT??" factor....
****
Just my opinion!!:)
Best,
Tom
Chinaclipper

Thanks for the reply.

To make it clear, I want to know if the equipment is going to work together properly. Will 5.1 surround be functional with all the different source devices? I really don't hear the finer differences by varying speaker quality, or even speaker placement, and neither does my wife. Nor would our children even care :-).

If I were looking for "best" or high quality sound and acoustics, I would be looking into a completely different price range.