[nova]

Hello Mike, Welcome to the Shack.

The 606 is a fine receiver, I prefer Denon (personal preference) but at this price point receivers from Yamaha, Denon, HK, Pioneer and Onkyo are all comparable. Right now Onkyo generally has a bit of an edge in performance/features/price.

As for HTiB vs. picking out a system,... depends on what your expectations are. HTiB may satisfy you, or you may hate it.

As for ratios,... I'd suggest you spend about 3:1 audio:video, so to get the most out of your new Samsung you'd be spending about ~$4500 - $5000 on your receiver, sub and speakers. Of course this does not mean "you" will not be happy with a $900 HTiB, again it depends on your expectations. Everyone has different wants and needs, some spend $5000 or more on a display and are totally satisfied with a $399 HTiB, some spend $20k, $30, $50k or more on the audio side and are happy with an RCA CRT console that was $399 15 years ago,....

So,... If "I" had a $1000 budget today for the audio side of a Home Theater,.... I'd go with:
EMP Tek HTP-351T for $689
Denon AVR-1908 for $298. I think you'd need a 1909 to get the Dolby True HD and dts HD so the Onkyo TX-SR606 for $348 may better fit your needs.

 

[nova]

so the EMP Tek HTP-351T and Onkyo 606? If I was willing to dish out a little more, would it make a big difference? how does it compare to the Onkyo 6100 HTiB?

A little more,... no, I don't think it will make much difference. There are other systems out there that will rival this one for about the same costs, but I really doubt you would hear a big difference,... unless of course you really dislike the sound of the EMP's:bigsmile:. EMP is basically taking a hit on these speakers in the hopes of getting some of these systems out there in peoples' hands. Rather than spending a bunch of money on marketing they are looking to entice people to purchase and capitalize on word of mouth. And as Tony already pointed out, the EMP's will be a big improvement over the Onkyo HTiB system.