Nothing wrong with some of the HTiB's out there at the moment, especially not for a first foray into surround sound.
My first 5.1 system was a $250 JBL speaker system. (Receiver and player were separate)
My brother, sister and I chipped together and got my Mum a Sony HTiB for Christmas. HT-S2200 I think it was.
My current speaker set-up is a little better now:
Fronts - Paradigm Monitor 11v5
Center - Paradigm CC-370v4
Rears - Paradigm Monitor 11v4
Sub - Paradigm Servo 15v2
The sub is my favourite speaker. It has peaks of 4500 Watts, RMS 1500 Watts, accurate down to 12Hz. It's a ******** monster.
I'd like to replace the center with a CC-590 so that all 5 of my speaker have +/- 2dB down to below 50Hz. I listen to a lot of Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio discs so having full range speakers all around was important when I was deciding whether to go with bookshelves or dipoles for the rears - I went with floorstanding towers instead. Actually I replaced my v4 fronts with the v5's and moved the 4's to the rear.
The CC-590 can handle 150w as well, whereas the current center can only handle 120w. I'd like to upgrade my receiver to the Onkyo TX-NR905 as it processes DSD natively and has PCM1796 DAC's, which have 123dB dynamic range. The receiver can deliver 140w/ch and benchmark testing shows that it is an honest rating.
Anyway - here's a pic of the sub beside the right floor speaker. The grilles are only off for the pic. See what a monster that Servo sub's driver is? I mean, it just LOOKS like it wants to give you trouble breathing.
http://img127.imageshack.us/my.php?i...ture0265yu.jpg
Here's a shot of the rears. You can see the JBL's still on the wall. These pics are over a year old and the JBL's have long since been taken down and wires covered by wall molding.
http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?i...cture279qs.jpg