Andrew wrote:

Thank you for your input.
I think I will try myself to listen to good stereo and surround to make my
own judgement. At the moment I am going to choose an open option which means
buying stereo with an option to upgrade it to surround in the future. I
think this should be quite a good solution...

This will work just fine, and it is a viable option as long
as you are willing to spend the additional money in the
future. However, if you want to limit yourself to $2000 you
will get a more realistic sounding system with a 5.1 speaker
package, a decent surround receiver (with DPL II decoding),
and a moderately priced DVD/CD player.

Howard Ferstler
Writer for The Sensible Sound