New Theater Advice
I have recently gone through designing and building a high end home theater. Our budget was originally much higher than your proposal but we found that we could do it for much less than we had planned.
For design and acoustics I can recomend:
Rives Audio in Indiana they provide world class design and service for a reasonable price (actually it can't be beat for what you get from this quality of experts). Contact Richard at 800-959-6553. Their website is
www.rivesaudio.com. Great information there.
I found that if you want really top end equipment, the used market is the best place to get it. Check audiogon.com. There is a broker of very high end equipment there that specializen in Wilson. Our experience with him has been excellent. His name is Chris Moon at
www.HigherFi.com.
We are builders and have always done home automation and AV in house. I have collected alot of info over the years and would be happy to share what I can with you.
What we ended up with.
Wilson Speakers
www.Wilsonaudio.com
Wilson Gran Slamms for the front three channels. The center channel is behind an acoustically transparent 20' screen.
Watt puppys for the four rear channels.
(if you have never heard these speakers, you should, they are in a class of their own).
Lexicon MC-12 Balanced for the processor
Krell amps all around
Two Krell Master Reference Subs (Awesome)
JVC DLA-QX1G
http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/present/brochure/dlaqx1.pdf
for our projector.
All controlled with Questron.
Don't get sold on very expensive cables. Good ones are enough. the others are a waste of money. This is where the dealers can relly make high margins.
At retail our setup would be over $400,000. We did it for closer to your budget.
Good luck, let me know if i can be of more help.
Steve