Chris,
If your wife has a long-lost sister, you can let her know that I found her... my wife has the exact same thoughts as yours regarding the decorating. However, I will defer to her as my previous bachelor tastes (years ago) left a lot to be desired.
Glad to hear you're happy with your purchase. I'm expecting delivery of my Epic Master system in the next couple hours (woo hoo!). Unfortunately, I will not be able to set it up for several weeks due to job commitments. This is my first home theater system, and I've spent several months reserching, listening (though haven't heard Axiom live yet), comparing, etc.
I ordered the Boston Cherry finish to match our entertainment center. Black would have worked, but since the cherry was available, we jumped on it.
I actually had to rearrange the basement and install another cable outlet on the other side so that I could hide wiring (wife's orders) and hopefully optimize the layout for the system. No front stands allowed (guess who?), so I'll mount the speakers (M3's) to the outside of the entertainment center which will give a nice spread of about 8-10 feet.
Did you listen to the TV with your wife right off the bat, or did you do some break-in/calibration first? My wife is on board with the system, especially since we've found that we struggle to discern dialog from many DVD's though the picture is absolutely fantastic (S-Video). I've tried all the different "surround" combinations that my DVD player has, and decided to just leave it in the "off" position while leaving the "surround" mode on for the TV. Works well, but I'm counting on the HT system to be able to separate everything out properly.
Unexpected wife benefit: wants nothing to do with complicated remote juggling and thinks the touch screen remotes (Pronto) are cool. Of course I didn't give away the farm but offered a heartfelt "If that's what you want honey, we'll get it." Obviously, it's practical to pare down the number of remotes, but being given the green light for any gadget is awesome!
Now that I'm rambling, I'll go for now. Have a good one, and enjoy the system. You can bet I'll be on the board again when I have everything set up. The system will be:
- Epic Master system
- Denon 1802 receiver
- Sony Wega 32" flat screen
- Home Depot/Lowes 12-ga cable
- Acoustic Research cables/interconnects, including banana plug connections (will have an in-wall run to banana plates for surrounds)
- Sony DVP 300 DVD player
- VCR
