which home theater system is better? why? any other options around same price range?

well i cant answer you question the way you would like but heres my 2 cents.

1. Home theater in a box (HTiB) systems are next to junk. the wattages these sytems say they are are always overrated and usually by alot! they are made cheap to fit into a smaller price range. basically you get what you pay for. dont get me wrong though.. if you have a budget that you must fit into then this might be the way to go. I would definitley stay far away from Sony HTiB though. go with Onkyo if you must.

2. new TV technology in accordance with home theater systems in pritty simple. as long as your tv has HDMI hookups you should be fine as long as you are not going into the 3D era. then you will need a 3D t and a 3D bluray player as well but the surround sound would not be affected by this.

3. make sure your surround sound system and bluray player decode DOLBY TRUE HD and DTS MASTER AUDIO. these are the 2 major audio codecs that you will need to hear the best audio available from blurays.

i had budget when i got my system as well. i spent around $600 and i love my set up. its not the best but it surely works and i know its better than a HTiB. i got this system setup (links below) and after i got it i found out thiswas the best rated budget system on bluray.com at the time (about a year ago).

Harman/Kardon AVR 254 receiver: (ONLY get it from the H/K store)

http://cgi.ebay.com/Harman-Kardon-HK-AVR-254-7-1-H...

Polk Audio RM6750 Speaker System:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

as for the best budget system... i cant find the link anymore but here is a link that should be able to answer ANY question in the world that you would want to know. i use this site all the time for blurays but in the forums yu will find every topic you would eed to know about. here is the forum link but if you are using blurays now or later i HIGHLY suggest doing background reaerch on the movie using this site as well.

http://forum.blu-ray.com/

Hope this helped little... GOOD LUCK !

EDIT: i found the link for the entry level home theater challenge... here ya go. read this...might help alot!

http://forum.blu-ray.com/home-theater-general-disc...

They are junk, they are equivalent to the sound quality of a boombox, but with more speakers. the only company that makes decent HTIBs is onkyo and yamaha. the problem with HTIBs is corners are cut everywhere. many times the speakers are single driver systems consisting of cheap paper drivers without a tweeter. the subwoofers can only go down to about 50hz and because of the size and range of the main speakers there is a large gap in response around 100hz. the amps are lucky to provide 15 watts of power all channels driven on a good day and the DACs more then likely suck as well. I would HIGHLY suggest you put together a custom system and avoid HTIBS all together, if you dont have alots of money start with a stereo setup and add more speakers over time. a good solid two channel or 2.1 channel system will sound much more lifelike and enveloping then a crappy tv speaker or crappy HTIB. try some stuff like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

http://www.emptek.com/e5ti.php

http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/stf-2.html