The onkyo HTIB sets are a very good value.
If you have $1100 to work with though (or up to $2200), you can obviously get something that's better though.
Since you're looking for a movie/gaming rig, I would suggest getting a nice powerful sub.
I just bought some speakers from AV123 and I'm very happy with them. They have a killer deal on some of their midrange speakers right now.
RSC100MKIIs are half price @ $199.
Dammit... the RS150s sold out sometime between midnight last night and now.
Guess I don't have a killer deal for you anymore.
Hmmm....
Well, for movies I would say the importance of the speakers go
Center
Front Stereo pair / subwoofer
Surrounds
Rears
If you're willing to spend money as you go and upgrade over time, it would be great to get a good center channel, receiver, and sub first. For the rest of the speakers, you could just get two fronts and skip the surrounds for now, or you could get some speakers you intend to use for surrounds eventually and then at a later date upgrade your front stereo pair and move the first pair to surround duty.
With a budget like $1100, you could get a very nice receiver, sub, and center channel going.
$400 to $450 will get you a very nice subwoofer
$300 to $400 will get you a nice receiver
That doesn't leave you with a whole lot for the speakers though. You could get a nice center channel with the remaining money, but then you'd have a 1.1 system rather than 5.1
😛
Do you have any old speakers lying around? (Even from a Logitech set or whatever... anything that uses speaker wire and had a pretty normal impedence)
Another route to take would be to get a receiver and the front three speakers and skip the subwoofer and surrounds for now.
This would probably be the best idea for now if you want to get a great system incrementally.
Anyway, my total system cost right now is about $3000, so my research would probably be pretty helpful to you.
The options that I came up with for my final 5 brands were
Ascend Acoustics
Axiom
Onix Rockets
Swan
B&W
My final two brands were
Ascend Acoustics
Onix Rockets
I ended up getting
Onix Rockets.
Here is my fairly long thread about my speaker decision making process if you want to take a look.
For a $1100-ish budget, I think getting Ascend Acoustics could be a great option for you. Three 340s across the front and a decent receiver or a 340 center and 170 fronts and a very nice receiver would be a great start to a system. You could add a sub and two more speakers down the road to complete the system.
For a subwoofer, I would highly recommend checking out HSU and SVS. They really seem to be a cut above the rest for price/performance. For the $400 range, you could get an SVS PB10 or an HSU STF-2.
For a receiver, getting a refurbished one can get you a very nice receiver for a fraction of the original price.
I'm sure since you've looked around AVSforum you've probably seen a lot of these products suggested already.
When I was just getting into HT stuff a little over a year ago, my original budget was going to be about $600 to $700 for everything. I enjoyed my original system, but I wanted more. If I had to do it over again, I think I would have done it incrementally with higher quality components from the beginning. I've sold just about every part of my original system (still have the speaker wire and subwoofer cable), and got most of my money back on the purchases, but I think I would have been better off doing it right the first time.
Part of the reason I tried to keep costs down initially is because I wasn't sure I was really going to stay interested in the area and didn't want to throw too much money away on something I might not really enjoy.
If you know you have a genuine interest in this sort of stuff, I think getting a few high quality parts and building from there is a great strategy.
