AEROSCOUT,
What branch of the Army? I'm guessing aviation based on your username?
I'm enjoying in being in much the same boat, but your budget is about 3x mine.
Do you have a room picked out for this project? You might want to allocate some of your budget for room acoustic treatments if you need to (see below).
I wholeheartely recommend you seriously consider a projector as opposed to a TV. It requires a dark room for viewing, but your bang for the buck is much better. Take a look at
www.projectorcentral.com for a great place to learn, this forum also has some good advice. If you don't have a dark room, don't bother. For HD bang for the buck its hard to beat the Panasonic PT-AE700 or the Sanyo PLV-Z3.
Receiver: You have two winners picked out there. I've listened to both and they are both good, so you can't really go wrong. The Yammy has more options for sound processing and a more flexible parametric EQ (helps to tame the way the room may color your sound). Given your budget you may want to look at seperate amplification and just use the pre-out from your receiver of choice. If you want basically the same receiver for much less money I would highly recommend you look at the Pioneer 1015TX. You sacrifice a few bells and whistles in EQ and surround scenarious, and not nearly as much "brand name" snobbery there, but at half the price!
Speakers will be your biggest challenge. There are just so many vendors out there, with so little real data floating around, and so few places to audition. My suggestion is to go to some home theater stores and listen to all the very high end stuff and determine what you like the most in terms of sound. Then come back down from the stratosphere and try and find some reasonably priced models that match that sound as closely as possible. You can look on forums like these or in HT magazines and find endless variations and recommendations. Eventually you have to narrow the field and evaluate for yourself. I would highly recommend you go to a direct over the internet, as the value there for the speaker you purchase is often very good (no middle-man profits increasing your price).
Your sub does not necessarily need to be from your speaker manufacturer of choice. I've found that even the best speaker manufacturers do not necessarily put together the best sub for the money. (at least when it comes to low frequency extension) Take a look at some of the offerings from HSU and SVS:
http://www.svsubwoofers.com/
http://www.hsuresearch.com/
Don't forget that your room size and shape greatly effect the subwoofer's response (room modes). The smaller the room the more likely you will have issues. This can make the bass sound "boomy", not a good thing. You can handle this via room treatments (EXPENSIVE) or you can try and tame it with equalization. The EQ in your receiver is often not well equipped to handle low frequency EQ. The Behringer Feedback Destroyer is used by many to tame these low-frequency room modes, and can be had for around $100.
Don't forget a nice universal controller, all that gear is made much sexier when you can control it from a single remote - the Logitech Harmony 676 is a nice choice without spending in the thousands.
