I bit the bullet and starting spending some money.  I opened up the wallet for the receiver, the digital music system, a pair of speakers and the power conditioner.  My wallet definitely feels a lot lighter, or more correctly, my credit card feels a lot heavier.  I even pulled the trigger on the TV.

If you want all the details you have to click the link to read the rest.

1)  The A/V Receiver

I went with the Denon 3808CI over the Onkyo 875.  After going through the forums for each of these over at AVSForum.com, the Denon won out.  I read too many issues with the Onkyo and read more than one review that complained about the heat output.  Also, my old receiver is an Denon 3300, yes, it’s about 10 years old, but it has worked flawlessly all this time, so I’m giving Denon another go.  My cost on this was $1400.  It supports all the upconversion and scaling options I need, has plenty of HDMI and other inputs, has decent power and many other features I won’t use initially, but might down the road.

2)  The Digital Music System

I decided to spend the money and get the Sonos Digital music system.  They just recently came out with something called the Zonebridge, which works perfectly in my situation.  Since Sonos requires one Zone to be wired into the network, if your router isn’t where you want music and you can’t get an Ethernet cable to an area where you do want music, you had to burn a Zoneplayer at $350 just to have one plugged into the network.  Well, the Zonebridge is meant for just this situation and costs $100.  So I ordered their bundle, one ZP80, one ZP100 and one controller. I added the charging station for the controller and one Zonebridge.  All in, this set me back $1138.  It took me all of 5 minutes to hook up the first zoneplayer and the zonebridge.  This system is awesome, I just love it.  It’s so easy to use my daughter picked it up and figured out the controller in less than 2 minutes.  Both zones and the Zonebridge are now up and running and has worked without any issues.  I can even use the Ethernet port on the ZP80 to plug in the receiver to get it visible on the network.

3)  Speakers

I have all the speakers for the 5.1 system in the media room, but I needed a pair of speakers for the downstairs living room that would connect to the Sonos ZP100.  I’ve always been a fan of B&W speakers, so I picked up a pair of their 685′s for $600.  I placed them on the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and they sound great.

4)  Power Conditioner

This is probably the most controversial purchase in the bunch.  By controversial, I mean people will argue whether this is really needed or not.  Not much of a controversy really, more of a discussion.  Anyway, I picked up an APC H15-BLK A/V power conditioner that supports line filtering, voltage regulation and surge protection.  I found it online for $365.  When I received it and lifted it out of the box, I heard a rattling noise from within the enclosure, so back in the box it went and shipped back for a replacement.  The last thing you want in a power conditioner is a loose screw rattling around inside the box.  When the replacement arrived it was in better condition.

5)  The Television

Well, probably not too much of a nail biter, I went with the Mitsubishi 57833.  I guess I came to the conclusion that all the TV technologies have issues and it comes down to which one did I feel gave me the best picture with the greatest flexibility to adjust the controls.  Mitsubishi provides plenty of knobs to adjust the picture to your liking.  I dismissed the Sony 55A3000 since every time I looked at it, I could see pixelation and motion blur.  This could be an issue with the in store setup, but I didn’t see those issues on the Mistu.  Sony also limits picture adjustments to the bare minimum.  I went ahead and got the 5 year extended warranty for $279 which includes one bulb replacement and I’m having it delivered.  The TV is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday the 20th.  So all in on the TV including tax it’s $2532.

Grand Total:  $6200 including tax

Now all that’s left is to get some HDMI cables and hook everything up.  Should be a good Thanksgiving week.