Creative
Stay away from this one!!!
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The most inexpensive way to achieve the best sound quality for your new HDTV is to actually use a PC with a high end creative labs sound card and THX 7.1 speakers like their gigaworks. A PC with their highest end sound card will run you about $1K, the same as a good receiver. Except now, you can hook it up to their THX speakers and get 7.1 surround sound and complete control over your sound quality. Combine that with the fact that you do not have to also buy a DVD player now because your PC can do a better job of scaling the video to 1080p than a $500 sony DVD player.
The big disadvantage is the look of these types of speakers, otherwise they will provide sound quality far surpassing that of higher end 5.1 surround sound systems.
Gigaworks 750S speakers a creative labs