What to pair with Samsung UE40B8000

[admin_exported]

My new TV (Samsung UE40B8000) should arrive any day soon and I need to decide what Blu-Ray player and speakers to pair with it. I'm thinking of the Sony BDP-S760 Blu-Ray player, but I'm less clear as to what receiver/speakers to go for. I currently have a Harman Kardon AVI 150 amp - will I need a new receiver to get surround sound? or is it possible to do this using my existing amp provided I go for a Blu-Ray player which will decode HD audio internally and which has multichannel analogue outputs (I understand the Sony fits the bill here) - I assume this won't work tho' as the amp won't have enough outputs to connect all the speakers to.

On the speaker front, I'd love to be able to go wireless as the room the system will be in is quite large and will require miles of cable to go around the walls to the rear speakers. However, cost rules this out for now and from what I've read/heard, soundbars don't really cut it. So, the most likely option at the moment is a KEF KHT 1005.2 speaker set and miles of cable!!

Any advice/suggestions gratefully received

 

[d4v3pum4]

What connections and decoding does the AVI 150 have? I googled it and found nothing. When you say it doesn't have enough outputs to connect all the speakers to, what did you mean? If it's 5.1 it will still work fine, if it only accepts 5.1 multi-channel inputs, it obviously won't have 7.1 speaker outputs! Obviously buying a player with the necessary decoders and multi-channel analogue outputs would be the way to go if you plan on using the HK. If you decide to upgrade the receiver to an HDMI model, a cheaper HDMI only player will do fine, the difference between players when bitstreaming audio is negligible imho. Although the new Harmon Kardon amps are known to be good audio performers there have been issues with firmware, which I'm not certain have been completely resolved. Perhaps the staff at WHF can advise?

Everyone would love wireless speakers but they're expensive, never truly wireless and on the whole not as good as wired speakers. You can get discrete cable such as Ixos233 flat which has an adhesive backing and can be painted over. It's only a couple of quid a meter. Altnernatively you can hide speaker cable in conduit such as d-line which you can buy in larger B&Q stores.