What items do you want your 5-7k budget to cover?

a) 5.1 speaker system?
b) AV receiver?
c) Display (e.g. TV or projector)? Saw you mentioned projector earlier.

If you're just talking about items a and b then your budget would allow you to get some entry-mid level stuff. If you wanna include c inside then have to juggle a bit more.

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 1 2009, 05:22 PM

Oh, forgot to add one more component, the source player (in this case I assume u want a blu ray player).

For the moment I say stick to 5.1 first since most movies are still 5.1. But get a 7.1 capable receiver and you can always add another pair of surround speakers later to become 7.1.

For 5-7k budget, I think you can allocate 1k for the player, 3k for the 5.1 speakers and 3k for the AV receiver.

For 7-12k budget, maybe 1-2k for the player, 6-7k for 5.1 speakers and 4-5k for the AV receiver.

As for more specific component suggestions, I'll let others chime in while I'm also thinking what would be good.

For 5.1 speaker set you can also consider Klipsch RF-52 5.1 set. After discount should be under 7k.

Also check out the PSB Imagine series.