A friend of mine wants to hook up a home theater system. He has a Sony LCD so he's OK there. He currently has a DVD player and his cable receiver plugged directly into the Sony via HDMI inputs.

For speakers I'm clearly pointing him toward Aperion. His room is odd. The area that has the TV and will have the other components is about 15x10 with 15 foot ceilings. But, it opens up directly (no wall) into the kitchen/eating area that's about 20x20. It's also open on the side to the living room and a long hallway. His wife doesn't want towers so he'll be using bookshelf speakers for the front (I'm thinking 5B's). For a sub I'm thinking the Bravus 10. There's nowhere to mount rears - there's only a wall on one side of the room and his wife doesn't want anything hanging down from the ceiling.

The big question is the AVR. He said about 75% of the time he'll be watching TV (HD cable). The rest of the time he'll watch movies and some music. He has no plans to upgrade to a BluRay player in the near future.

AVR recommendations (there's no budget, but it's also not going to be an issue)? Rears?

Thanks.

Well considering that he's got those openings I'd say something in the vicinity of 120-130 wpc like the Onkyo 807 or Denon 3310 for an AVR.

As for the surrounds since he doesn't have anywhere to mount them and it sounds like he's got a good amount of WAF, then probably in ceilings would be the way to go.

Hope that helps!