I still consider myself a HT beginner. I'm interested in upgrading my 1070 setup sometime soon. It's not immediate since my wife is not working right now. With me being the sole source of income, I'm going to wait until she's working again before dropping any cash on new HT equipment, so if new products are around the corner, they're options as well.

I'm interested in an audio or video upgrade, but I would classify audio as the the priority. Given the setup you see, anyone care to suggest a decent upgrade? I have a couple micro-sized RBH speakers that could become speakers 6 and 7 but I need a profossional to fish the wires into my ceiling. That's a possibility. Right now I use the Xbox as my DVD player which has it's annoying moments (mainly the jet engine sound of the fan). I've almost purchased an Oppo up-converting player numerous times but I'm hung up on the fact that I don't have THAT many movies to upconvert. Meanwhile my HD-DVD player for the x-box has no HDMI which in itself is a little annoying. So I'm a little hung up. Cable upgrades? A second sub? More power? Help a guy out. I'm thinking something in the $1000-2500 range, nothing too drastic.

You seem to have some great stuff there. Not into audiophile territory but frankly better than my setup. Might be time to just have some fun and do the tweaking thing for a while?
Build yourself some new main speaker cables, put everything on spikes, try different stuff that you hear about but sounded too silly to actually work. Put concrete blocks on top of your CD player (kidding! - just use marble tiles).
Go to http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/tweaks.html and have a peek. I built the TNT FFRC speaker cables and they did add some clarity to my music listening. I went back and forth just to make sure and they do seem to work nicely. Plus they look very cool and cost a tiny fraction of what I could have spent.
Find a source of real good connections - I put on $6 a pop Nordost banana plugs and they are very nice. It's likely the only Nordost I can afford!
For fun you might want to try out some vinyl! You can probably find a great turntable for $100 somewhere and then a decent phono stage (NAD PP2 ish) and then hit up the local used book or vintage vinyl store and spend $100 or something. It's lots of fun, sounds very, very good and there you go - $300 and you've got a whole new hobby! You might just be surprised at how a $300 setup might put a $1000 cd player to shame.
For $1000 - $2500 you can have a year or more worth of fun tweaking and it doesn't have to be an all at once expense like a new tube preamp or something...
Good luck!

Thanks for the response.

I'm not sure making my own speaker cables would be much of a successful project. I dont mind DIY projects but they typically deal w/ drywall and saws, not wiring The turntable project sounds good. I may have to look into picking one up. In my stupid days, I got rid of a technics semi-automatic turntable and my father's entire classic rock LP collection upon return from college. I got a lot of use out of it up there and the LP's were quite worn. but in hindsight, i feel like an ass for not keeping all that. I didn't know what I was doing. In hindsight I could've thrown out a quality turn table but I'll never know now. My pops didn't buy junk but he didn't want it either. I didn't foresee the HT/audio junkie that I was going to become in a few years.

Now I'm thinking, to make my HT more audiophile friendly, I can see that using the SNT's as fronts could be a hearing bottleneck (for lack of a better term). I woudl think a pair of good towers in the front would be a sensible upgrade. I could always shift the front 2 SNT's to be channels 6 and 7 and purchase a pair of towers. Hmm...The upconverting DVD player is something that's back in my mind too. But I need to get this DVI switching on the 1070 to work if I'm to juggle the FiOS cable box and the DVD player with any grace.

REDSI,
just curious, what is it you are not happy with or want more of? I am going through a complete upgrade now, might be able to offer some direction I am using but really don't know what you are after.
UMtiger

RedSI, I feel your pain. Sounds like your dad abondoned something similar to the Technics SL1950 changer I just picked up. I'd have preferred a single play unit but I'm still pretty happy with it for now. If you want to get back into it you can do worse than the ProJect Debut III or Xpression models. In the US they must run about $350 and $550 or something.
You have considered the Oppo and from all I read that would be a great addition. I almost kick myself for having bought a Pioneer Elite DV46-AV recently! Having said that I am pleased with the image on my old Sony 53" rear projector. I hope to pick up a front projector very soon to take advantage of the HDMI/DVI output.
Were you having trouble with the DVI on the 1070? I was under the impression that the DVI to HDMI converter cables worked pretty well...
I don't know too much about the speakers you have although our only local HiFi store sells B&W almost exclusively. They say you should put most of your money into your speakers. You have the same conundrum I have though. Since you have a sub then you don't necessarily have to go full range although lots of purists figure full range fronts make the best music speakers. You also have the issue of matching the center channel speaker. With your budget you might be able to pull off some very good main speakers and a couple of decent monoblock amps. Say $1000 for the speakers and $1500 for amp(s). Just add them to your stuff and drive them from the Outlaw pre-outs.
And don't be afraid of wiring. Heck - it's just twist, strip, solder!

This isn't popular, but I've got to say it...

Room Treatment.

And I don't mean hocus-pocus, either, I mean bass traps, dampening material, maybe do some work with lighting and curtains too to help out the video as well. Eliminate the floor-ceiling bounces. This will make ANY system sound better.

It's also not expensive, though it can be quite time-consuming, not to mention you may have to work to find room treatments that you can live with on a daily basis. But you'll be glad you did.

I've got to agree with R.M on room treatments. I'm beefing up rugs over my tile floor and I'll soon add some Knauf insulation boards (similar to Owens Corning 703) on the walls. I'm taking care of first reflection points where I can achieve some WAF. For example one of the wall reflection points will have the insulation board behind a quilt my wife made. I have to admit, she is not thrilled about the insulation board on the ceiling regardless of how nice I tell her it will look!

Yeah the room treatments will be a tough sell to the wife, considering we JUST repainted and laid new carpet in this room. Like I said in my original post, I'm still pretty new to the entire spectrum of mods that are associated to HT, so room treatments didn't even occur to me when I was doing this room. Horrible to say, but true. I'm still kicking myself for not trenching the ceiling drywall to get channels 6 and 7 wired up. Now I'm stuck in 5.1 and have no wife-friendly method of going 7.1. Brutal, I tell you When I sit in meetings at work that have nothing to do with me, I brainstorm ways of getting those wires to the other side of my room. (It's a finished loft.)

ANYWAYS...I think I have some reading to do. Another side benefit of buying floor B&W's is that my fronts are spaced too far apart. My speakers should ideally hang where windows are. Inside that and they're blasting into my television. Floor speakers would give me the flexibility to aim the fronts just how I want them. See pic...

Maybe a new Outlaw amp plus some towers would be in order. I appreciate all the recommendations though, fellas. Now, I just need the wife to start working again!

Hey one other question - do you guys think the shape of my ceiling in this room is helpful or harmful to the overall sound in the room?

It's an interesting space. The WAF is always a pain, luckily mine has her own space at the other end of the house. Smaller places don't get that option and I sympathize.
The angled ceiling would tend to focus reflected sounds on the listening area and I would think you could expect a more diffuse soundstage... even perhaps to the point of being confusing. Some fairly directional floorstanders might be your best bet. Judging by the picture you are looking at a 'near field' listening experience and I know certain kinds of speakers are better for that.
I have also read that sometimes just having lots of difusing surfaces is better than too much damping although up to a point 'deader is better'. My intuition says that your current setup would tend to lift the soundstage into the air a bit. Not necessarily a bad thing judging by the setup of a lot of the theatres I've been in - both symphonic and cinematic.
Having said all that it's always what sounds best to you. The wall mounters make it a little hard to experiment with positioning. Given your investment in B&W I would suggest the best floorstander B&Ws you can afford. They would be more likely to match the voice of your center speaker and you can't argue sound quality - although some do.
It's a nice space. I hope you find a happy medium.

Speaker placement is pretty important to the overall sound and in most cases the electronics can't overcome difficult placements. I have set up my L & R so they are apart just less than the distance from the speaker to my listening position (85% actually). After some research it looked like that the 85% ratio was the best for stereo music. I think THX specifies that speaker width equal the distance between the listening position and the screen. In your case floor standers (either towers or speakers on stands) would allow you to adjust the L&R location closer to that ratio.

I'm no expert in acoustics but I think the sloped ceiling and the close proximity of the fronts to the side walls create some interesting acoustic bounces in your room. Its good that the floor is carpeted and you have soft furniture to absorb some of the acoustic bounces. Moving the speakers in might reduce the impact of the bounces off the ceiling and walls. Alternately if you are going to replace the L & R you might look for speakers that are very directional. The tweeters on my M&Ks have a pretty tight dispersion and so I don't notice the bounces as much. One more thing, if you move your center speaker under your TV you will reduce the influence of the ceiling on the sound of that speaker. You may notice the dialogue is clearer since you are not hearing it twice (first from the speaker and second from the ceiling).

For more info try googling "acoustic treatements, first reflection points" and you will find a wealth of info on acoustic issues and treatment for HT.