Quote Originally Posted by L.J.
Great stories everyone. There's alot of patient guys out there.
One of the nicest parts of the home theater hobby is that it inherently rewards patience, and provides ample opportunity for incremental upgrades along the way. Just think of how many times people have come onto this board inquiring into HTIB systems. Almost all of the more experienced posters respond by preaching patience, because they either have first hand experience or have observed other newbies making similar decisions.

I think the biggest dilemma comes when people decide between a complete 5.1 speaker setup up front, or only buying the best pair of speakers available for the same budget. With a complete 5.1 setup from the outset, the complete surround functionality is there from the beginning. But, at the end of the day, expending more of the budget to fewer speakers at first and incrementally adding on will eventually result in a better performing system, provided that the buyer's willing to go with less than optimal virtual surround and nonmatching speaker setups in the interim.

And with upgrades, there are so many different options available that the hobby provides. In my case, with every additional speaker I added to my initial two-speaker setup, I got that much better sound quality from my system. And upgrades don't even have to involve buying new components. Just learning how to properly align the speakers, level match and time align the speakers, equalize the subwoofer, use the receiver's menu options, calibrate the video display, etc., can have its own set of rewards.