It's time for a home theater
 

I'm looking to finally get a home theater audio setup in my apartment, as I'm tired of hearing the sound only through my TV. Here's what I think I need:

• My TV is a 46' Samsung doing 720p, 1080i, no 1080p; it's got two HDMI inputs and three component inputs, among other things.
  
• I've got an XBOX360 non-elite, so it's using Component rather than HDMI. The "TOSLINK" optical cable is supposedly digital, so I'd like to find a system that has at least one TOSLINK input. If not, I'd have to take Component (well, Composite) audio.
  
• I hope to some day get a Blu-Ray player (PS3, perhaps), and they seem to only output in HDMI, so I'd need a system with at least one HDMI input.
  
• My Comcast cable comes in HD through an HDMI cable to my TV, so I'd need a system with at least two HDMI inputs, I think.
  
• Most seem to come with DVD players, and some come with "upconverting" players that interpolate to 1080p. My TV doesn't support 1080p, so I'm not sure if this is worth it for 720p.

Any recommendations or corrections? Only started looking at this a few days ago, so I'm not certain it's all right. I'd like to keep it under $600 if possible, or $1000 if it's really an investment.

I live in a small apartment, nested between other people. So a Bose system worked well for me. I don't have space for ginormous speakers... not to mention it's plenty loud that it sounds like a warzone in the hallway during some action movies.

I'm not up to date with the HTIB systems. I'm interested in what this may be since I'll have to upgrade at some point in time in the future...

Less than $600? Onkyo. Quite frankly there is nothing that can compete with the price to quality ratio that Onkyo delivers right now.

I'd either get or .

What Will said.
Now, if you want to get a better price for Onkyo products, you should visit Shoponkyo.com. They have refurbished ones for up to half off retail. One more thing, you must remember that Onkyo's HTIB do not include a DVD or Bluray player, so, that's another purchase you will have to make and will add to your 600 limit.

get a ps3 with w/e system they're recomending.

Take a look at offerings from Denon as well.

Not true, I bought an Onkyo 894 system about 6 months ago and it came with a DVD player. Granted it is an older system, and does not do all the new HD audio codecs but the system, with feature for the price could not be beat (I found it on sale at Amazon.com from Tigerdirect for $400 SHIPPED)

I don't have a need for the new HD audio codecs since the blu-ray player I own is my PS3 so I can have it do my audio decoding and pump the 5.1 signal out to the speakers through the receiver.

I went through this same what to buy about 6 months ago when I bought the Onkyo, some things to look at especially with the THX system above it does not use HDMI, which depending on your setup and preferences may or may not be an issue. You can run your component cables and get the 1080i with no problem and use an optical or other form of audio cable. Another HDMI issue is the pass through, they don't actually use the HDMI to decode the audio, they just push the video through to the monitor. and you'll need a seperate audio cable (someone may want do double check me on this one, but I recall when I was looking, some of them had HDMI but didn't do audio and video with it)

Post back and let us know how the search is going