If you have a wife/gf/partner that has, well, some skepticism about your HT hobby, my advice is this: Buy as big/expensive as you can when you can. Upgrades can become slow, convoluted labrynths of misinformation, sleight-of-hand and derring-do.
If you are unattached, my advice is this: buy as big/expensive as you can. Why go through the trouble of trading up later? Although there is always something new and shiny to trade up to anyway.

"There's too many notes!" M22ti VP150 EP350 QS8 AVR-2805 SCD595 Panasonic DVD-S35