Expert’s choice: home theatre packages

If some kind individual came up to us here at Home Entertainment with a pile of money, and invited us to buy the best possible home theatre system with the available dollars, what would we buy?

That?s the challenge we?re undertaking here. Except that there are three amounts of money involved. First there?s a modest $4,000 for a ?Budget? system. Remember, that includes not just the DVD player, but the display, a digital set top box, a home theatre receiver, a full set of surround loudspeakers and a subwoofer.

Then there?s a middle-ranked system with a total budget of $16,000. Don?t worry that that we?ve gone just a little over on both of these. Our dollar tallies are based on the recommended retail price. You can do better than that in the real world.

And for our no-holds-barred system? Well, read on to see how much we?d spend on that.