So, you get a new house and you can’t just keep your old RCA, speaker-kit-in-a-box system. So I decide to venture out and try to put together my own set. I searched around for a while and finally stumbled upon a Pioneer 5.1 speaker kit (I’d link that but it’s not on the site anymore) on Overstock. It got to the house relatively quickly and I had it all unboxed on Saturday. Turns out, speakers don’t do much without a receiver though, so it was time to shop. I had considered a Yamaha at Best Buy, but the store didn’t have it in stock and I didn’t want to wait for it to arrive via UPS ground. I wound up going with a Pioneer 7.1 x 100 watts/channel receiver which has 3 digital audio inputs and component video switching abilities (no HDMI at this price range) for $200 at an RC Willey Outlet store (the service was great, maybe we should have used these guys for carpeting). It had to come down from Salt Lake, so I didn’t get it until that evening, but that’s OK.

The beast took me a while to set up, mostly from inexperience and from being unsure how some pre-existing wiring in our house worked (someone had already done some wiring for surround sound, though it turns out it was just the left channel, *sigh*). But, finally, all the speakers were working and it was totally worth it. A-mazing. Seriously. The sub that came with the kit is much larger than the one I’m used to and the whole room vibrates comfortably as a result. So anyway, here are the totals (post shipped and taxed):

Speaker kit from Amazon: $84
Receiver from RC Willey: $212
Being able to understand the dialogue from Casino Royale: Priceless

Goes to show you can get a good system at a good price, but you have to put some elbow grease into the search. I’ll be able to hear the Wiggles like never before.