My TV setup
For no reason other than I'm a massive nerd and love home theatre gear, I'm going to post the specs of my current viewing set up. Please direct all penis-size comparison jokes to my email.
Since my meatspace friends generally aren't as obsessive with film as I am, my original plan of hosting regular screenings in my house never really eventuated.They also don't care about home theatre technology, so I soothe the pain by posting about it on my blog (sob, sob).
Television
Panasonic VIErA TH-P46S10A 46" plasma
The VIErA is the only product line I considered, since the Pioneer Kuro was way too far out of my price range and Panasonic's panels look fantastic for the price. 46 inches seemed like overkill at the time, but now I'm glad I decided against my initial instinct to look at a television no larger than 40".
A/V receiver
My main requirement for a receiver was at least three HDMI inputs and support for uncompressed audio, since I planned to view Blu-ray with it. The 1610 is an entry-level receiver but still supports a nice range of audio formats, and has a great feature where you can save input/output settings and assign them to shortcut buttons on the remote control (important for making it usable to my girlfriend, who probably wouldn't put up with having to change input sources and output devices manually).
I lugged this hunk of mass all the way home on the train from Carlton Audio Visual.
Speakers
Accusound Signature Reference 6.5 series (5.1 surround)
I bought these brand new off eBay at a massively reduced price (they retail for $2,499 and I got them for a little over $900), and they are probably the best part of my entire set up. I've got a weirdly shaped living room with no room behind the couch to put rear speakers, but even at 90 degrees from the viewing position they sound awesome.
The sub-woofer sometimes leaves a little to be desired but I never did spend much time on setting it at the right level, so that's almost certainly my own fault.
Blu-ray / DVD player
I bought a PlayStation 3 because it's a more than decent Blu-ray player and, at the time I bought it, comparable dedicated players were going for around $1,500. And hey, it came with a cool feature where you can play games and stuff on it.
I have three terabytes of external storage on my desktop computer full of ripped movies and TV shows, which I stream directly to the TV via the PlayStation and a program called PS3 Media Server. It's possibly the greatest piece of free software available in the world, and it lets me sit on my arse on the couch and select a movie without even having to move three metres to my DVD cabinets.
DVR
Freeview is a crock of shit, so I had to special-order one of the last non-Freeview models Topfield had on the market at the time. The interface is less than ideal but I subscribe to IceTV which enables me to set recordings from anywhere using my phone, and also makes it easy to record entire series with one command.
I have this all hooked together with HDMI and optical cables from a small Australian supplier called EzyHD, and I definitely recommend them to anyone else in the market for cables. Compared to the $10 HDMI cables at computer stores they're moderately expensive, but the build quality is pretty amazing.
So that's my set up as it stands. It may not be as awesome as a dedicated theatre room with a motorised projector and reclining seats, but it's definitely better than what I had previously: a 30 centimetre portable TV and a $200 DVD player I bought with my first month's pay when I was 15.