My home theatre space consisted of a 1000 cubic foot space with Bose 601s as the fronts, a no-name centre, a 150W Sony sub, two Sony bookshelves as my rears, and a 28" GE tube-style TV crammed into an oak entertainment centre. The audio was powered by my current Denon receiver. The best picture I have is the one below (ignore my daughter's science project pictured up front).
We then renovated the basement into the 4,000 cubic foot space you see below.
I still have the Denon amp but the TV is now replaced by a Sammy 32" LCD, and the speakers have been a replaced by an Epic80/600 7.1 system. I know for a fact that there is absolutely no way that my old speaker/sub gear could satisfy me in this larger space for music or movies. As for the TV, I am sure it would have served us fine if it was still working but it sure would have been ugly.
With the 600 in this space, I don't need a couch shaker for movies. And music with this sub is absolutely superb as the sub weaves the bass between the music rather than just laying it on top. All the subtleties of bass are revealed. The QS8s are very different from my old Sonies. They are very diffuse making surround effects difficult to localize which is actually very cool. I could have definitely lived with the Boses for movies although I would have had to crank up my receiver to the point of distortion. But the 80s are astounding with music. They have the perfect balance of lows, mids, highs, image exceptionally well and the soundstage extends well beyond the speaker boundaries with well-recorded material. And they are very efficient so you don't need a 250W/channel amp. As you can see, the speakers actually enhance the over-all appearance of the space.
So for me, this has been a huge step up.
