If you're up for some reading,
read this for the general reasoning why Bose is a dishonest company and makes such a poor product per dollar.
You're in luck though, $2000 is plenty of money for a more than decent audio system; especially if you're comfortable shopping online.
DVD players from Denon, Oppo, Panasonic, and Pioneer make great choices. Try not to spend more than ~$200 on the DVD player. There's so many choices, it'd be best to whittle down the options. Would you like to use HDMI or is component video fine? Do you need SACD or DVD-Audio (different from normal DVDs, if you weren't yet aware) support?
Receivers from Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha are more good choices. I'd try to stick around ~$500 here (or less). If you choose especially hard to drive speakers, the budget gets stretched a little thin (so, try not to do that). Something like the
Pioneer VSX-1016TXVK (an excellent price at that link once it's in your cart; includes very basic HDMI support) or the
Onkyo TX-SR674 (again, add to cart for better prices; similar in features) would be my big recommendations (JR is a good store, I've had excellent experience with them; there are many other fine online stores too). Both of those can easily be found at local stores as well as online. If you've never owned a "real" receiver, expect to be blown away with how wonderful they are to use compared to home-theater-in-a-box offerings or Bose products.
Interconnects should be the least of your expenditures. If you'd like some pre-made, try companies like
Impact Acoustics (not super cheap, but nice to look at and reportedly good customer service),
Blue Jeans Cable (not super cheap either, but well built -- I do own some of their products), or
Acoustics Research (also available at your local big box electronics stores), or
MonoPrice (really, really inexpensive). If you'd like to make your own, you can generally get inexpensive wire from hardware stores (Lowe's, Home Depot, et cetera) or online at sites like
Westlake Electronic. For fancy and convenient terminations, I highly recommend buying online, as the local stores tend to charge more than they're worth.
As far as speakers and subwoofer go, here's the rest of your budget. Just because a company makes good speakers doesn't mean they make good subwoofers, you can largely mix-and-match as you'd please.
If you'd like to stick to local stores where you can compare the sound side-by-side: Boston Acoustics, Infinity, KEF, Klipsch, Monitor Audio, NHT, Paradigm, Velodyne, and many, many more. Check what your local Hi-Fi stores carry and not just the big box stores. Try to listen to as many brands as you have the patience. If you can, test the speakers at home. Always bring your own test material with which you're thoroughly familiar.
Popular online vendors include
AV123 (the x-series being the cheapest followed by the rocket series),
Axiom Audio (stay away from their largest towers on a basic receiver, but otherwise pick-and-choose as you'd like),
Ascend Acoustics,
SVS, and
Hsu Research (mostly for their subwoofers, but their speaker offering is interesting too). Check each of their in-home-trial and return offerings, some are better than others.
If you'd like to get something tiny (at the loss of potential output headroom): check out
Orb Audio's offerings.
That's enough from me for now, I think
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