So my sister is buying my old HT equipment to use in her basement (small area about 20x20, if that). I have set up my Outlaw 950 pre/pro for a simple stereo setup for her (using a 65 watt amplifier for the two front speakers). Eventually I will be changing it to a full 5.1 setup (with a powered subwoofer) so my question is is it okay to just find her a relatively inexpensive receiver to power the front three speaker (moving the 65 watt amp to the rears) instead of investing in a three-channel amplifier? She just wants a decent sound system (she is actually thrilled at how nice the stereo set-up sounds) so were not talking anything big or major frills at all here. I've seen open box receivers with enough power at Best Buy and other places for a decent price ($200-400 dollars). I'm assuming that I can just connect the speakers to a receiver and then run the connections for the receiver to the Outlaw, correct? Never had any experience with this sort of thing so any advice will be greatly appreciated. thanks.

This can be done, but it's trickier than you've described. The main problem is that receivers lack a "main in" connection directly to their amps. Instead, you will need a receiver with a multichannel analog input, at which point you will connect the pre-amp outputs from the 950 to that input. You will then need to find a volume setting on the receiver that works for calibration (I'd probably set the center channel trim on the 950 to 0dB or maybe +5dB and then adjust the receiver volume until you get 75dB with the 950's test tone), then calibrate the 950. After that, your sister will need to never change the receiver's input or volume setting - altering either will wreck things. The receiver will also not have a trigger input to allow it to be turned on automatically by the 950, so she'll need to remember to turn it on each time or you'll need to set up a universal remote with a macro that does that for her.

A used amp may cost slightly more, but it'll be easier to operate and will likely sound better - receivers in this price range aren't going to have especially good amp sections in them.

Check out the Onkyo TX-SR508 at Amazon.com

All the bells and whistles she will need for $235.00 right now. Great for Santa day.