All decoding done on the player. Pure-analog stereo/multichannel signals through the system.

Works very well both as a two-channel system and as a home theater.

We're fortunate in that our living room allows setting up speakers in correct ITU 5.1 (3/2) orientation and spacing, and no room correction is needed, despite the woodstove and pool table in the rear. (We move the speaker near the woodstove out of the way on those rare occasions when we need to light a fire.)

I've been an audiophile since 1971, when I wandered into Gaylord Audio in Concord, California while I was as supposed to be in school.

I'm fortunate that my WAF is a perfect 100% (we're both engineers), so we've built this out together, and she likes the way the system looks as much as I do.

Equipment closet is off to the right and ~50' from speakers and monitor, which produces a very clean look and hides distracting front-panel lights to improve watching movies, but also introduces possibility of ground loops, EMI problems, and HDMI dropouts. These are addressed by running cables in individual grounded conduits; running LFE balanced instead of single-ended; using 6' HDMI cables with proper EQ and matched Lumagen scaler and HDMI extender; running dedicated 120V power in separate, dedicated circuits to the left and right rear speakers, center speaker, left front speaker and sub, right front speaker and sub, and flat panel; and conditioning the power for the preamp, player, and scaler.

Cabling is pragmatic (high quality, reasonably priced, no voodoo): Blue Jeans Cables for signals and HDMI, Martin Logan CLX power cords for speakers, Take Five Audio/Neotech power cords for Anthem, built-in power cord for Furman, commercial-grade outlets.

Equipment rack is Metro Super Erecta shelving, which is inexpensive, attractive, flexible, strong, mobile, and cool-running.

Media racks are from Boltz. Strong, attractive, and flexible.

Conduit installation and other construction work done by Terry Welfring Construction, San Jose, California, and his dynamite crew, the Hernandez brothers.

Power and cables box on wall fabricated by Protoforms in San Jose, California.

The UV-protection fabric is Solarweave, from rockywoods.com, cut and hemmed by Leading Edge Sails, San Mateo, California.

And (not shown) the plasma is protected by a circuit described on my free-inventions blog (http://free-inventions.blogspot.com/2010/04/power-outage-power-cutouts-for.html).