Home Theater Buying Confusion?

[DarthVader]

I have no knowledge of how this works. All I have right now is my TV, and an Xbox 360, both of which I wish to use with the surround sound. My tv is a 32 inch LCD HDTV Emerson. It has a sticker on the front that says HDMI and another one that says Dolby. What does that mean. Does it mean i have to use a dolby home theater product? Also I know that you need a receiver and the speakers, but I dont know if some speakers dont work with certain receivers, etc. I want to buy the receiver and speakers from Amazon.com and I'd like to spend 150 but I'll go 200 if I have too. Could someone give me a few links to good products that I can use. Whichever answer i buy wins the best answer.

[peterd]

Your TV is just saying it's compatible with the Dolby sound format. Dolby does not make home theater products, so you don't have to worry about that.

With a $200 budget you're going to have to go with a bundled home theater setup. I always recommend a receiver-based system rather than a DVD-based system. That way you don't have plenty of connections and no redundancy. I usually recommend Onkyo's systems because they're a good value for the money. I received a "hot sheet" sale advert from eCost today. They're selling the Onkyo HT-S4100 for $170. The MSRP is $500. Amazon and newegg have it for $350, so at $180 you're getting a pretty good deal. But there's a clock on this sale, so grab it while you can.

http://www.us.onkyo.com/model.cfm?m=HT-S4100&class=Systems&p=i
http://www.ecost.com/Detail.aspx?edp=42799990&navid=155441519