With my first taste of home theater surround sound several years ago from a Dolby Pro Logic receiver (Onkyo) I got for basically nothing and repaired myself, it has been an intriguing experience. Since then, I've had several different used systems (pioneer, sony) and eventually would buy a Pioneer 5.1 dolby digital/dts/pro logic ii receiver, and after wanting a little more, took it back and got a 6.1 dolby digital ex, dts-es, dts neo:6 pro logic iix, and several other things, which is what I am still using.

The Onkyo system was my main system before buying the pioneer receivers. It had better sound quality than the sony and used pioneer pro logic system I tested out, and it had the remote with it, which is essential to setting up speaker levels and positions.

The Onkyo was only pro logic 5.0 - so it didn't have a subwoofer output. A lot of bass comes out of the front speakers though. With pro logic, every thing is matrixed. With the introduction of laserdiscs also came discrete channel surround (dts, dolby digital) and in the later part of laserdiscs, even dolby digital ex (discreet front L, C, R and matrixed Back L, C, R) - (L, C, R = Left, Center, Right - Back: Back and/or Side surrounds.)

Matrixed surround basically uses a stereo track which uses phase-shifting and -DB manipulation to steer sound to the various speakers, which is not perfect, while discreet surround basically uses what some may consider a mono digital track that carries channel information for each speaker. It is more compressed than pcm and has a lower bitrate (until dolby truehd, digital plus, lossless formats come along) but has more precise sound steering control. The sound gets to the speakers the way the engineers want it to.

At first, I couldn't tell much of a difference between pro logic and dolby digital 5.1. If you're use to a mono or stereo tv, etc, you may actually like pro logic more at first, because of its small un-precise imperfections. But after getting more and more use to surround sound, you start to get the feel of it.

I moved to my new place several months ago. Not long after that, I started thinking about finishing up the theater system. Getting a subwoofer was one of the best upgrades so far, but I've also built shelves and stands, and basically only have to build a shelf for the floor-speakers (want them a little bit elevated,) run the wire through the walls, add speaker connector plates, re-arrange the tv/surround setup so that it's more ergonomically correct, and maybe add some wire loom, to make the rats nest of wires look better.

What does all of this have to do with considering a blu-ray drive? Well, I've got an HDTV, a pretty much hi-def sound system, a hi-def XBOX 360 w/hd-dvd player, HD Tuner, and Hi-Def 4dtv (c/ku-band analog, digital, and HD) system.

For now, HD DVD just doesn't have a lot of movies that I'd really like to have in HD, while Blu Ray has several I do want. I'm not sure how that will change, but I'm guessing that if HD DVD doesn't get enough movies by this summer, I'll probably buy a blu ray player, whether it will be a ps3 or stand alone player.

Some of the blu ray titles that I'd like to have (not on hd dvd) currently: X-Men 3, Terminator, Terminator 2, Fifth Element, House of Flying Daggers, Alien VS Predetor, The Covenent, Species, Commando, resident evil 2, and probably a few more.