For films, dipole speakers are a must. They spread the sound around the room more effectively so they don't localize the sound. But you need a good amount of space between the speaker and the back and front walls for it to work properly. Each speaker has a particular sound driver so mixing and matching brands aren't generally recommended but you can get away with mixing the rears since they only do 10% of the work during the course of a film.

Can you stretch your budget ?

What size room, tv model, etc

I'd get on eBay.

Pick yourself up an Onkyo 606, 607 or 608 for about 100-150

Then plump for the Kef 2005 egg system with sub 250.

You'll have a very good 5.1 system for that originally worth £1000+ and be plenty powerful enough for your room size.

Brilliant, that's what I'm after mate. These new TV's are made for adding your own amplified sound, can't believe it's taken me so long to look at it. Will check eBay out.

Out of interest can you get speakers without the wires having to stretch all the way round the rrom from the tv now? (i.e. wireless).

Got surround sound in my room but don't want to go drilling into walls etc to hide the wires.

If possible, get the TV out the corner of the room. The acoustics will sound much better if you have the TV central and the speakers evenly spread either side.

Like Red said the Kef eggs are decent, I'd also look at the Q Acoustics 2000's, you can pick up a brand new set off ebay for under £400. Then find a 2nd hand amp but make sure it can handle HDMI, again ebay is a good place to start or get on the classifieds section of AVforums and start a wanted thread and see what offers come in. Try and go for the Onkyos Red mentioned or a Yamaha RX-V or a Denon.

Let us know how you get on, us AV obsessed like to see what kit others have got set up!

Took these off a mobile and colours look washed out, but basically this is what I did.

Previously I had quite large b&w speakers and the fronts were quite big. As we got kids I was worried that he'd knock one of over and damage my speaker himself.

When you use smaller speakers, specifically designed for home cinema and not hi-fi there is a huge difference. They only go down to 80hz and then below 80hz the sub woofer produces everything else. Once you set up the speaker distances in the Amp's menu and plug your Sky HD box into the amp with a optical cable (Toslink cable) it sounds unbelievably different.

The amp has PC in on it. So if i download a HBO fight or a movie, especially if it's a blu ray rip, the amp cleans up the picture and smooths the sound out and it's no different from watching a TV broadcast. Thats one of the main benefits of a decent Onkyo amp is that it can upscale images you give it and thus on a big tv you dont get any loss of picture. Even if the sound track is stereo, it will still produce surround sound with dialogue through the centre speaker and bass through the sub.

I flushed in all the cables and plastered the walls with my mate who is a plasterer. It took me about 3 hours to chop all the walls out down to the back box position, then clip all the speaker cables in place. We spent a couple of hours re-plastering the entrie wall with a couple of layers and then once dry I fitted the brush box so the cables look tidy, then dressed them into an Alphason rack. Then a lick of paint and wired it up. Whole thing took me a weekend. But it's great having everything wall mounted and no wires. The sub is placed anyway in the room, so is slotted in the corner out of view. You cant tell which direction bass comes from so it doesn't have to be in a particular space.