Easier, cheaper surround sound is available
Watching movies in your living room with surround sound is great, but getting set up can set you back big bucks.
Home-theater-in-a-box systems can save you money and hassle. The box has all the components you need: a center channel speaker, two speakers for the front of the room, another set for the back of the room, and a subwoofer to enhance the bass.
Many systems also come with a Blu-ray player. The big advantage is that all the components come together in one box-everything connects easily.
In Consumer Reports' audio lab, testers checked out dozens of those systems, costing $250 to almost $2,000. Some of the best systems had audio quality that approached that of separate components.
An $800 system, the Samsung HT-E6730W, is among them. It delivers terrific sound, includes a Blu-ray player, and has other nice features such as an iPod dock, so you can listen to your iTunes library as well.
If you don't need a Blu-ray player, you can get a surround-sound system for half the price. Consumer Reports recommends the Yamaha YHT 497, which costs about $400. It delivers very good sound and also has an iPod dock.
Home-theater-in-a-box systems can save you money and hassle. The box has all the components you need: a center channel speaker, two speakers for the front of the room, another set for the back of the room, and a subwoofer to enhance the bass.
Many systems also come with a Blu-ray player. The big advantage is that all the components come together in one box-everything connects easily.
In Consumer Reports' audio lab, testers checked out dozens of those systems, costing $250 to almost $2,000. Some of the best systems had audio quality that approached that of separate components.
An $800 system, the Samsung HT-E6730W, is among them. It delivers terrific sound, includes a Blu-ray player, and has other nice features such as an iPod dock, so you can listen to your iTunes library as well.
If you don't need a Blu-ray player, you can get a surround-sound system for half the price. Consumer Reports recommends the Yamaha YHT 497, which costs about $400. It delivers very good sound and also has an iPod dock.
Surround sound has changed very little in the past 15 years. I bought my Sony receiver at Fred Meyers around 1998, for about 230$ if I remember. It still plays the newest dolby digital, dts and pro logic from analog sources like the WII. You dont need to spend alot, 5.1 is fine, I wouldn't pay extra for a 7 or 8.1 system, most people wont notice the difference.
 @SkaBob Your old system won't play the newest formats - Blu-Ray added new formats with much higher quality audio than Dolby Digital and DTS (even for 5.1) with the new formats DTS Master Audio, Dolby Digital Plus, and Uncompressed, which don't fit on the old DVD's.  With good speakers the new formats support higher highs, lower lows, and just all in all clearer sound.
Dont forget Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Plus was just an expansion of AC-3 mainly used on HD-DVD's, while TrueHD is most commonly found on Blu-Ray's and rivals the sound quality of DTS-MA, Also Dolby just introduced ATMOS which can support up to 64 channels and is fully scalable so something mixed in 64 channels for the theater will play properly on a 5.1, 7.1 or even 10 or 12 channel home system and still sound as great, its the next big leap from Dolby.
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Personally I'll stick to my 7.2 setup, it's fun having friends and family over and seeing the looks on their faces when they sit down in my theater and realize it rivals if not blow's away most commercial theaters for picture and sound quality.