Well, I just went through this exercise myself starting about a month ago. I had basically 10G's to setup my newly built home theater/recreation room. The money came as part of inheritance, so was basically "found" money.

A final note: I realize I can get the Elite components quite a bit cheaper online, but I value having a local certified Pioneer dealer for important components for warranty and service reasons.

Here is what I bought:
Receiver: Pioneer Elite 56Txi (1300 dollars)
Universal player: Pioneer Elite 59avi (1000 dollars)
Main Speakers: Paradigm Reference 60's
Center Speaker: Paradigm Reference CC470 (about 2200 for all 3)
Surrounds: Axiom QS8 X 4 (1000 dollars)
Sub: EP500 (1100 dollars)
Projector: Sony VPL-HS51 (2800 dollars)
Screen: Homemade (60 dollars, details to follow)
Acoustic panels: Home made - 7 of them (180 dollars total)
Speaker Cables: In wall Ultralink 4C12 (12 gauge/ 4 conductor wire -- 175 dollars)
Other cables: Blue Jeans cable (200 dollars or so)

Now, to explain some of this stuff:

The Pioneer combo gives a combination of great sound and great convenience. I use the i.link (IE1394) digital connectivity between the player and the receiver to have 1 single wire that sends over all audio signals to my receiver, and automatically determines source material type (ie stereo vs. dts vs dolby surround). The elite 59avi also has an hdmi output which is perfect for my projector.
The 56txi also has 2 component video inputs that I use to switch between my HD cable box and my XBox (and I then send a single component video cable to the projector).

The screen is homemade using Dazian fabric, which has about a 1.1 gain (and is cleanable) and some 3/4 inch by 2.5 inch pine to frame it out cross braced with 3/4 inch corner trim on the edges to make it look real nice. Easy to make, 60 bucks total, and I bet you can't see a difference between that and any other 1.1 gain screen you could buy for upwards of 800 bucks.

The real gem of this setup is the projector in my opinion. My God, is this thing amazing. 1920 by 720 natural resolution, and the clarity, colors and contrast are unbelievable. I watch HD Discovery channel and its like Nirvanna. My screen is 105" diagonal and I can't see screen door unless I'm inside of 8 feet from the screen (and I have 20/15 vision, which is better than 20/20). There is ZERO vertical banding and the black levels are amazing (6000:1), which is previously unheard of for an LCD based projector. I can't rave enough about this marvel of technology, and I can't imagine anything near this price providing anything close to this performance. The AE700 is very popular in this price range, but has vertical banding and no where near the black levels.

For the acoustic panels, I bought egg carton type foam and framed it out with 3/4 X 1.5 inch pine wood and covered it with an acoustical friendly fabric.

Furniture was bought separately and encorporated in the room.

Obviously, if you are going with an entire Axiom speaker setup, then you will save an additional chunk of change over the Paradigm speakers. But with all said and done, I am very pleased how my setup has turned out.

Last edited by Bretsky; 01/27/05 04:53 PM.