Home theater setup, 2nd room

When I found myself in your situation over a yr ago, I bought a Cambridge Soundworks Ensemble HT speaker system, a Technics receiver (tried an Onkyo, but not enough power) and a Sony hi fi vcr. TV is a 27" Sony. I haven't bought a DVD player yet, but if I were buying today, it would be the Sony DVP-NS500v. Speaker cables were from Cambridge and I used whatever old interconnects I had laying around (MIT, Straitwire,etc) plus some Canare video cables from ebay. For background music, I'm using an old Radio Shack CD3400 as a transport with a stock Art DIO dac.
I did upgrade the center channel speaker to a Cambridge Newton model (nice improvement).
My room is about 10 by 12 in a finished basement.
While you won't see my system on the front cover of Sound & Vision, (and it's sound quality won't force me to re-think my higher end systems) I spent well under $1k and enjoy it alot.

Thedautch:

I am someone who also has separate systems also. My audio system is located in my living room, and my home theater is located in my bedroom (where I do a majority of my relaxing, so it is fitting that I have my home theater there). With my Harman/Kardon AVR-210 Audio Video Receiver ($600.00 list), Toshiba SD-2700 DVD Player, and my Sennheiser HD-580 Headphones (I cannot use speakers because I live directly above someone), my home theater system runs about $1,000.00 as well. But that's before you add my Panasonic 27" Television and my Sony S-VHS Hi-Fi VCR (which although, it pushes the price to well above $1,000.00, it still keeps the price to well below $2,000.00).

But anyway, if you live near a Best Buy (or if there is one located somewhere in your area), why don't you go there and check out one of the Yamaha systems that they carry. If you find one, then you should be able to get an A/V Receiver, DVD Player, and a Speaker Package, all for around $1,000.00 or so. That ought to be sufficient enough for your needs right now.

Good Luck.....

--Charles--