Don't pay too much attention to what the salesman says anyplace. I am not saying honest knowledable salespeople don't exist, I am sure I have met one once (now retired), but the odds are heavily stacked against them steering you in any direction other than their sales bonus.
The weakest element in reasonably priced Receivers is HDMI switching. The high def DVD players haven't fully settled how the copy protection authorization works, and my guess is the dust won't fully settle for many months, so most of what I have seen in receivers is VERY simple like 2 input passive switching. Routing everything through the receiver immediately steps you up to only the lastest premium models.
What most people do for now is route all the Audio and standard def Video through the receiver, and hook up the high definition source directly to the display via HDMI or DVI depending on what it supports. Do it this way an really any decent quality unit made in the 5 or so years should be fine for now.
If you have to put speakers in the ceiling, I guess thats just something you have to live with. Quality has certainly improved over the years, but its still costly and inferior to free standing speakers, even really small ones (as long as they don't start with a B and have 4 letters). I have to wonder what the center channel with all the dialog will sound like coming from the ceiling. Make sure you get a contractor that knows sound.
I tried a search for Samsung DLP HSL5088W and didn't find any reference to it outside of this forum, so I had to guess a bit on inputs etc. All this is of course just my opinion, and I am just another normal person, but with no requirements of any kind its hard to make any suggestions. Brands I like are Onkyo, Sony, HK, and Yamaha for a start.
