i'm sick of watching all my movies with the 'sleep' feature on...my 2 yr old and 3 month old need their sleep and i need volume. I miss the booming bass and such. So, funds are limited and therefore i'm doing a cheap-o dedicated HT in my basement, but need help. I have a few vacation days and plan to get it done this week.

Room is large - wall w/ tv and front array is 15-17' - side wall is concrete and is 22' - rear wall is 23' and other side wall is open to rest of basement.

Since i'm going 7.1 and have tons of room for speaker placement - where do they go? I printed a diagram from Dolby's site but it doesn't fill in all the blanks..I have enough speakers to get this done. (Revels,Infinity and Polks)

Q's:
- how far apart should the back-rear speakers be (6 and 7)?
- i need to hang all surrounds around 9' high (should i angle them downward or firing straight)?
- i can place the sub anywhere, where should i begin?
- does SACD/DVD-A use different speaker placement than Dolby?
- plan to mount side surrounds just behind my sweet spot and above?
- any other suggestions?

Things i'm looking forward to:
- My HK receiver uses Logic7 to convert 2 channel into 7 channel (can't wait to try this)
- Hockey is back and will be loud
- DVDs in DTS ES and DD EX (Star Wars triglogy) ...is there a difference in 5.1 vs 7.1
- Music in 7.1
- Sub placement options..never happy with my current placement
- moving surrounds from the rear to the side. I bet it changes things

thanks for any suggestions, i'll keep looking here and report back next week on what i found.