I think most people, myself included, get into home theater in a evolutionary way. Meaning that we have built up our current systems over time, sometimes years.
The most important thing I try to explain to newbie's is that you need to buy equipment you can build upon. You don't want to have to scrap the system you have in order to move up to something better. This is the biggest problem I see with HTIB's. They usually have one integrated receiver that is junk, with some junky speakers. Where can you go from there? When you finally decide to upgrade, and most likely you will, you have to scrap the whole thing and start over.
In my case I bought a good receiver, Outlaw 1050, and some decent speakers, Paradigm Monitor 7's. I had a homemade sub, and center channel. Then I bought some cheap Boston Acoustics for surrounds. Then I upgraded to Axiom M80's, which also required a bigger amp. Then later got an Axiom center channel, then later an Outlaw sub, then later Axiom surround speakers. This evolution took about 5 years, Now I have a really nice system. I couldn't afford to do it all at once. And I didn't know enough about HT to do it correctly from the start. Learn more, upgrade, learn more upgrade, spreads out the investment. Eventually you get to a point where you say, this is good enough for me, I don't need to spend any more............. Until you hear something better and decide for yourself if it's worth the money to you, to make the improvement.
The point is you don't have to get there all at once. If you buy good equipment, you can build from it. If you buy junk, you will have to scrap it and start over. Not that Orb's are junk, I'm not familiar with them.
