One of the main reasons for wanting to get a nice stereo system is the wide availability of music through Kazaa and 9.95/ mo music listening online.

How does digital music sound through a stereo system. I know that lots of Kazaa stuff is of lower quality sometimes.

I have a DVD burner on my laptop. How can I route that through my reciever to record TV shows?

How much money should one expect to spend on cables for a 5 channel system with TV, receiever, DVD (Component video) and laptop computer?

Thanks a million. Please refer to my newbie has questions post. It has a lot more questions. Thanks again.

buying a high end stereo for downloading music isint a great reason, because majority or MP3 sounds like crap. Unless you have cable and can download 320kbps files and hope that they are perfect.

I second Haoleb. MP3s are not of sufficient quality to justify buying a nice stereo system to play them. Granted, they will sound better on a nice stereo than through computer speakers, but still...

On that note, I often play songs from my iPod over my home stereo. It does sound MUCH better than playing MP3s through my decent computer speakers, but I didn't by the stereo to play MP3s. It's just a fringe benefit.