IMO, I wouldn't touch powered speakers if your goal is to ever expand upon your system and put them in as part of an AV system, or if you want to run a lot of different sources to them. Especially any source requiring HDMI. A fair bit of that purchase price is going to the internal amplifier and audio components to make that speaker work instead of just having a speaker which is built from the ground up to work 100% and sound good doing so. This is, of course, personal opinion, but if you can get an external AV (or just audio) receiver, then you can connect multiple sources to it. You may find one used that is top shelf quality for not a lot of cash, especially on the used marker, which sounds really good and has very good power output with excellent DACs and audio components inside of it.
Oh, and Def Tech isn't a crap brand, but some of their stuff can be a bit overpriced for what you get.
If you can, go locally and listen to some speakers for a bit to see if there is anything specific you like. I find that there are about 10,000 speaker brands and speakers out there. Most are priced appropriately, and most deliver the quality you would expect for your money. A few are rip offs of being complete garbage, and some just want too much money for what they deliver. But, at the end of the day, if you buy any speaker pair, they will generally be quality/price appropriate and everything else comes down to your listening preference.
