Looking to buy a home theater system.

Onkyo

whats your budget? and what are you looking for? 5.1 or 7.1?

Onkyo will most likely give you the best bang for your buck in a home theater in a box setup.

do you need to know what cables you will need to run as well?

and how many hdmi inputs does your TV have?

Pioneer or Denon are both very good.

An Onkyo Home theater in a box may be the best option for you. Newegg has this one for $300. and that's with free shipping. Newegg.com is a great site and can be highly trusted.Its not a top of the line system by any means, but its a good system, from a good company. Onkyo is right in the middle of things i would say as far as value and quality go. I would put them ahead of a sony of samsung HTiB that you would pick up at best buy for sure.

the only down side to that system is the HDMI passthrough on the receiver. it wont pick up the sound from the HDMI cable so you will nee to run an optical cable in addition to the HDMI. There are a couple ways to handle this.

the first would be to run and hdmi and an optical out from your ps3 and your 360 to the receiver, and then an hdmi from the receiver to the TV. Ive heard that the 360 isnt very friendly to do this though. I dont have a 360 so Im not sure how everything is set up with it. So I would suggest finding someone who has done it and getting step by step instructions form them.

The second would be to keep the 2 HDMI cables running to your TV, and then run and optical cable from the TV to the receiver. By doing this, all TV sounds will be exported to the receiver through the optical. I'm just not sure if you lose any sound quality this way. But i dont think you should.

If youre interested in teh system. here is a link to some discussion of it on AVSforum.com

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1134092

also, the difference between 5.1 and 7.1 is the amount of speakers.

edit: I also wantedto add that if you need more cables, such as HDMI or an optcal, go to monoprice.com, mycablemart.com, or amazon, and youll save a ton of cash over a big box store like best buy.

5.1 = 1 sub woofer, 1 ceter channel, 2 front speaker and 2 rear surround speakers.

7.1 = the same as 5.1 with the addition of 2 more satelite surround speakers position at the sides.

for your budget and what you are looking for I think that I would go with 5.1

The second would be to keep the 2 HDMI cables running to your TV, and then run and optical cable from the TV to the receiver. By doing this, all TV sounds will be exported to the receiver through the optical. I'm just not sure if you lose any sound quality this way. But i dont think you should.snowren24

Just pointing this out that it will most likely not work. Most TV's don't support audio passthrough with optical. It's mainly used for OTA/DTV basic channels that have DD 5.1 and have no other way of outputting it I believe.

[QUOTE="snowren24"]The second would be to keep the 2 HDMI cables running to your TV, and then run and optical cable from the TV to the receiver. By doing this, all TV sounds will be exported to the receiver through the optical. I'm just not sure if you lose any sound quality this way. But i dont think you should.ChubbyGuy40

Just pointing this out that it will most likely not work. Most TV's don't support audio passthrough with optical. It's mainly used for OTA/DTV basic channels that have DD 5.1 and have no other way of outputting it I believe.

i was wondering why this would work sometimes in set up s for me and wouldnt with other ones, thanks :)

[QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

[QUOTE="snowren24"]The second would be to keep the 2 HDMI cables running to your TV, and then run and optical cable from the TV to the receiver. By doing this, all TV sounds will be exported to the receiver through the optical. I'm just not sure if you lose any sound quality this way. But i dont think you should.snowren24

Just pointing this out that it will most likely not work. Most TV's don't support audio passthrough with optical. It's mainly used for OTA/DTV basic channels that have DD 5.1 and have no other way of outputting it I believe.

i was wondering why this would work sometimes in set up s for me and wouldnt with other ones, thanks :)

NP, it took me forever to figure out why I couldn't get my TV (Scott, rebranded and resold Samsung TVs) to output ANY audio through HDMI. After searching the internetz I found out that usually the optical out is reserved for DTV attenna/input. The small toshiba in the guest room and my mother's Samsung both also do not output audio over the optical out except for RF/coaxial input.