Building new house

[scorpion12]

I'm having a new house built for me and I've got 3 rooms prewired for surround sound.

The family room will house a 47" lcd wall mounted; room size is approz 18'x22' or something like that. Main purpose of this room will be watching directv, movies, dvd's, playing cd's, mp3's, satellite radio Sirius or XM...

The play room upstairs is more like an alcove off of a hallway... 12'x14' or so... will house a 46" lcd on a stand in the corner. Main purpose of this room will be Xbox, Xbox360, Wii, Gamecube, directv, movies on demand, dvd's...

Master bedroom is approx 18'X22' or so and will house a 42" plasma wall mounted. Main purpose of this room will be directv, movies on demand, dvd's, satellite radio Sirius or XM...

A Sony surround system will be moved from the current house to the new one and be installed in the playroom.

I was looking for the other 2 rooms and don't know whether to go with a HTIB or a handpicked system...

This is what I came up with for a handpicked system... the Onkyo receiver and 1 of the 3 listed speaker systems to pair up with it.

Receiver:
Onkyo TX-SR705
Speakers:
Harman Kardon HKTS-18 or
Polk Audio RM6750 or
JBL CS480BG.

Or, for a HTIB,

Onkyo's HT-S990THX for the living room and I don't know what for the bedroom.
I don't want to spend a fortune on these 2 systems.
Do I need THX certification?
How many HDMI inputs do I need?
The tv will be Directv (hd dvr) if they offer it...
suggestions are appreciated, or tell me I'm nuts or stupid or whatever because I'm clueless.

 

[Halon451]

How much money are you willing to spend? THX certification doesn't necessarily mean anything, it just means that whatever equipment carries the logo has been certified by THX to their particular standards. It certainly doesn't imply that any equipment that does not carry the logo isn't worth a damn.

As a general rule of thumb I usually recommend staying away from HTIB systems, but in your case a decent one might be the quick fix for one of your secondary rooms, such as the playroom where it is not going to be your main movie/music area.

Let us know what your budget is, there's a ton of choices out there and plenty of bad ones, but everything needs a starting point and proper direction.

 

[scorpion12]

Budget? Honest answer about $1,000+or- for the family room.

The play room will be getting a currently in use Sony HTIB... we don't see a reason to let the Sony system go to waste.

The bedroom most likely will be skrimped on as well price wise as there won't be much watching of tv's very often.

My wife says the only thing that matters to her is that everything's the same... she doesn't want a bunch of mismatched components.

The main room I'm interested in is the family room and getting some quality sound so I can enjoy my media as well as the family's.

 

[sotagoon]

Not more than $1000 for sure

You won't see any big gains unless you really step up.

Stay reasonable...you'll thank yourself later.

 

[jcPanny]

HT System

You might consider adjusting your TV and Audio budget. Get a 32" LCD for the play room and/or the bedroom and get a real HT system for the main room.

If you can budget $1k for a 5.1 speaker system and $4-500 for a receiver than you can put together a good system. Below this price range you will be limited to HTIB systems or entry level bookshelf speakers.

 

[Halon451]

I agree - 1K is a fairly modest amount, for any real system. To put it in perspective, a reasonable mid-level receiver alone will run you roughly $400-600, and a good subwoofer will easily crush more than three-fourths of that budget. We haven't even talked about speakers yet.

Check out the SVS and AV123 for very good, low-priced speaker sets.

And don't use Monster cables to hook it all up - it will cause your equipment to burst into flames. Trust me. I've seen it happen.