Well, I guess I should back up and tell you guys and gals my sob story...

Once upon a time my family bought a Panasonic SA-HT920 DVD Home Theater Surround Sound System. Couldn't be happier with it, as it played all of our favorite DVDs with great sound quality. This past Christmas, however, we bought my dad a Blu-Ray player with some Blu Rays, and all seemed great... until we tried playing Inglourious Basterds. Everything was fine until we played the movie (Including the title screen)... as the DVD player would then say ERROR and no sound would come out.

Fast forward to calling Panasonic and Best Buy about the problems (and doing a bit of research of my own). It appears that the sound system wont work with movies that come with 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio Surround Sound. Now, more and more movies have this type of sound quality (our most recent example is Avatar... and Lord of the Rings...) so our BluRay player is becoming more and more obsolete with each passing Tuesday (I can only watch the Dark Knight on BluRay for so long!).

Now, it also turns out that the Sound System we currently have is unique to the DVD player, so we can't just buy an audio converter and switch all of our current speakers and sub. It's obsolete without the DVD player hub... so we have to get a brand spanking new sound system.

Now, I'm not looking for the end all be all of sound systems (Best Buy's "best" deal for us was over $1,000...) and I don't even care if the sound system has another BluRay player as the hub. I'm looking for the best mix of quaity and affordability, and I don't care what it is or what it comes with.

I'm asking you guys because you guys are awesome... and you probably know more than I do when it comes to this sort of thing. Help a BluRay sound deprived VGChartz member out!

Well personally I would stay away from the Home Theatre in a box deals, those are rarely ever of good quality and like what has happened to you, you can only use them with each other.

I would go with separate components personally, it can be a little more expensive but then you are in control of which peices are what plus you can replace one part of it and the rest still work.

You can get a good A/V reciever with all the HD codecs needed for around $300. Stay away from Sony recievers though, that is a mistake I wont make again.

A good Blu-ray player for $150-200(or a PS3 for $300 which would make it competely future proof). I would stick with a Sony on this one, they seem to have the best ones and are always keeping them up to date with firmware releases.

I dont know what prices are on 5.1 speaker setups are, but I got mine for about $800 3 years ago, so I would think they are a little cheaper by now. Klipsch is the brand I chose and I have been very happy with the sound they produce.

*Looks at Vetteran's profile pic*

Hrm... you look like you're very knowledgeable about this kind of stuff.

Yeah, the employee at Best Buy was talking to us about a quality receiver for around $400 while the rest of the speakers/subs/etc. would go for around $600. That's a lot to take in... but like you said, I really don't want to be dealing with this same problem three years from now when the box set doesn't work with a certain set up.

I would go for something on the order of this with your budget.

Klipsch 5.1 HD Home Theatre setup - includes Sub, Center channel and all 4 satellites

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Klipsch+-+HD+Theater+500+5.1-Channel+Home+Theater+Speaker+System+with+Powered+Subwoofer/9385747.p?id=1218096162766&skuId=9385747&st=klipsch%205.1&cp=1&lp=1

Yamaha 7.1 A/V Receiver - It has all of the HD sound codecs, not all receivers have this. It is 7.1 but thats alright you can use it as a 5.1, mine is a 7.1 and I did. Plus you can then later expand you setup with a couple of nice towers like I did as well.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Yamaha+-+630W+7.1-Ch.+A/V+Home+Theater+Receiver+-+Black/9785073.p?id=1218173773915&skuId=9785073&st=reciever&cp=1&lp=15


Sony Blu-ray Player - This one is a easy decision, Sony Blu-ray players are the best in this price range.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+Internet+Connectable/Wi-Fi+Ready+Blu-ray+Disc+Player/9740471.p?id=1218165049301&skuId=9740471&st=Sony%20Blu-ray&cp=1&lp=3

Its a little bit more than you want to spend but you wouldnt regret a single dime spent

@Vetterman

Haha, that's the exact same Home Theater system that caught my attention at the Klipsch website. Yeah, it looks great indeed. I'd give you a high five... but... this picture will have to do for now.