Greetings, I plan on building a HT system around my Pioneer Elite 51". I bought it in 1997. How does this model compare to some of todays big screens? I paid close to $ 4500.00 at the time of purchase. The picture looks great to me, although I been looking at it for quite awhile. My room is 13'6 x 13' x 8' with an alcove at the rear that's 9'6 x 3'6 x 7'. The alcove has built in couch which is where I sit. I was planning on buying the Epic Master around 1K for the speaker system. Placement of the rear surrounds would go in the alcove, or out in the room in front of where I sit?

I don't have anything useful on your TV set, but I'll comment on the surrounds. First, you're actually going to be using what are better called side surrounds rather than rear or back surrounds(back surrounds would be the 6th and 7th speakers in a 6.1 setup). Where side surrounds only are used, they should be, if possible, slightly behind the seat, rather than directly to the side, so as to give a bit of "back" effect. In your case the alcove makes things a little tight, but positioning on the sides of the alcove about 6 feet up and if possible a few inches behind you should work well. In any event the rear tweeters of the QS4s would give some bounce off the back wall, so the fore and aft positioning shouldn't be critical.