the most important thing when buying speakers regardless of price is to audition them. specs, opinion, salesmen all have different opinions as you have seen. one disadvantage of buying online is you cant hear/see the product to demo it, so make sure if you go that route go somewhere with a good return policy. if you are watching movies, then there are two speakers that matter most, center and sub, so id spend the bulk on those two. if you like music more then the fronts are most important. and you wont get nearly as good of performance from in walls as bookshelfs, so id say put them on stands in the front. there are a bunch of really nice looking/performing stands out there that any wife wouldnt mind much. $1800 is not a tremendous amount for speakers considering the pre/pro and amp you picked out, so perhaps you should think about buying what you feel are the most important parts first and then gradually adding the rest. that is always a good way when on a budjet, eventhough its nice to get it all out of the way at one time. lots of places offer tradeups on speaker models, so even if the line changes a little bit, you can trade in your old ones for the new ones and then complete the set. i would stick with one brand for every speaker other than the sub, since voice (timbre) matching is vital and the tweeter is what allows this matching. i have always found that polk audio is a good performer at a good price except for their subs which are junk. i cant recommend any subs to you since i only have used ones that cost more than your entire budget, but svs is highly rated and so is hsu.