I'm starting to look for a bigger TV also so i'll be interested in the suggestions.

I can recommend the PS3 for the Blu-ray player.  I picked it because with the Blu-ray standards flux i figured Sony would keep the firmware maintained better/longer than many of the standalone players.  It has worked well.

If he'd looking to buy soon let me note Amazon is having a sale.  Got this e-mail from them last night.

Quote:
Dear Amazon.com Customer, 

As someone who has shown an interest in TVs and HDTVs, you might be interested in our top deals at Amazon.com. Through June 6, get a free TiVo HD digital video recorder with select Samsung HDTVs. Through June 10, we are offering 24-month financing on our most popular HDTVs from Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi. Or, shop our huge selection of HDTVs from all the top brands at incredible prices.

To top it all off, we offer Free White-Glove Delivery on all 27-inch or larger HDTVs purchased from Amazon.com. 

When getting the TV, find out all the makes and models being sold in your area in store.  Go look at what you like best, second best, and so on - then go home and look up the reviews on those models.

I did that but had my iPhone with me so I looked up the reviews at the store.  Based on them, I shied away hard from my #1 choice and ended up going for my #2.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
When getting the TV, find out all the makes and models being sold in your area in store.  Go look at what you like best, second best, and so on - then go home and look up the reviews on those models.

I did that but had my iPhone with me so I looked up the reviews at the store.  Based on them, I shied away hard from my #1 choice and ended up going for my #2.

I'd suggest this one as well Max. Best to try and get the sales rep to display same content on both / all screens at the same time if possible whilst in the showroom. But do bear in mind, some showrooms may have a deal going with certain suppliers to sell their wares, so might tweak certain models to look better picture / sound wise to obtain a sale. So I would also look at reviews on the web as well.

Same for the sound equipment. Best places to go if any are around would be the small independants, they might be a bit dearer, but at the end of the day they would be after giving customer satisfaction as a high priority, (they'd want a returning customer after all), and would even handle the installation in most cases as well.

Steve

And a good universal remote should be considered also.  I have a Harmony 880 (Harmony has several different ones).  Relatively inexpensive and i've yet to find a piece of equipment not in their online database.

Your friend should certainly consider using a large portion of the budget for audio. Having a huge screen with crap audio isn't going to give the experience he wants. He can easily find a great looking LCD display for under $2500 allowing for the other 50% of the budget for audio and extras. $5000 might not sound like a lot but with some poking around it's easy to fit something pretty good into that range. Amazon is a good place to start.

For screens I'm partial to the Samsung line, they have great picture quality (up there with Sharp) and are typically a little less expensice. Also, LG makes some good ones.

Samsung LN46A650 46-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color - Just under $2000 at the big river.

Audio is going to be a really personal thing. People who generally like a brighter sound will like Infinity... Klipsch and JBL are the two leading supplier of sound systems for commercial cinemas. They would be a good place to start for that "authentic" theater sound. Definitive makes excellent products, as does Polk Audio. Polk has some awfully damn impressive packages for under $1000. Just depends on exactly what he wants and what his preferences are in terms of sonic likes and dislikes.

He can get really good receivers for under $600...In that price range he'll get a ton of power and will give him a good amount of connection options as well. Onkyo, Denon and Pioneer all have good equipment that can be bought online in that range which will give him the newest audio codecs and HDMI connections as well.

So far he'd be looking at roughly $3500 for the display, receiver and speaker set. That leaves almost a third of his budget for Blu-ray, maybe a new upconverting DVD player, a new remote (yes, the Harmony ones are incredible - the 1000 is about $350 at amazon, full touch screen!, plus there's virtually no programming involved). That still gives a lot of room for speaker cable and other connections. PureAV offers a good line of cables and connections that are reasonably priced and perform very well. To boot, they are typically considerably less than Monster (if he doesn't want to pay that premium).

Really, $5000 can get you a lot, especially when you search out deals online. Best Price Audio/Video has some excellent pricing and very good customer service. I ordered from them a few times and I've recommended them to a number of people.

My suggestions take about $1000.

So he can spend another $1500 or so on speakers. I have some suggestions there too but I am not sure if those speakers are available in the states.

That leaves him $2500 for the TV.

That would make a fine Home Theater.

if you can shop vanns.com sales, you can get some azing prices.  i got 2 mirage omnisats to use for surrounds at $99 apiece.  Now im in a pickle because  just went 7.1 and need 2 more surrounds, but they re $299 a pop.  oops.