Onkyo HT-S770 6.1-Channel Home Theater System Silver
best in its price range...
Onkyo has long been making easily the best home theatre in a box systems below five hundred dollars...easily blows away the Sonys, Panasonics, and ESPECIALLY the hideously overpriced Bose systems.<br /><br />Just remember a couple of things:<br /><br />1.  You get what you pay for.  This system is great for movies, but not great for music, which is much more demanding of better speakers.  Well what do you expect for this price?<br /><br />2.  The speakers are NOT satellites.  They'll produce far better sound than those ridiculous little Bose satellites or the tiny tall skinny Panasonic towers, but that's because they are in REAL speaker sizes.  Not as huge as really good audiophile grade speakers, but not tiny little cubes either.  Hey, it's simple physics.<br /><br />3.  Onkyo is famous for its ease of use and solid build quality, which makes this an ideal entry-level mass-market setup in terms of quality-to-value raio.<br /><br />Personally I think you could do better buying a separate receiver and a separate speaker system, for a couple hundred dollars more.  Or you could actually stay within the same price range if you buy a refurbished receiver, for instance go to ecost dot com and look at their Onkyo 502 for under two hundred dollars then buy the Yamaha NS-P436 Digital HomeTheater Speaker Package from plasma bay dot com for two hundred fifty dollars.