Thanks for all the super advice? No, I don't have a 5.1 anything right now. I have been posting on receivers since this is the first item I intend to buy. Once I have that, I plan to try 2 speakers at a time, in my HT room. Once I am set on the two, I can go from there and build the 5.1. Part of the issue is that the local specialty store is somewhat limited on speakers. They have a lot, but they are low-endish. Their mainstay line is Boston, and then they have Monitor Audio as their upgrade. I did think the Monitors sounded quite good on 5.1, but then I asked the guy to switch to "plain" stereo and my whole listening experience took a nose dive! Kinda interesting. It seemed like the near field projection of the speakers was like 2 feet or something, and w/o the 5.1, the sound was lost. Perhaps I am just not used to the difference between 2.1 and 5.1 but in any case, the 5.1 was very good on the Monitor speakers.