Best place to start when upgrading?

Hey boat how much do you have to spend.
I suggest you do it over 1to 2 years so you can put as much cash as possible into it.

Boat, the first step is to determine where you want to go with your system. Are you looking perform a modest upgrade, or do you want to completely transform your current setup? Once you make this determination you can then realistically come up with a budget.

Regarding home theater, I am of the opinion that the picture completely overshadows the sound. If I were putting together an HT system I first would focus on the video. For my taste a 27" monitor is too small and an upgrade to a 35/36" would reap big benefits. Also depending upon your viewing habits a center channel may not be required. A center channel is used to fix the sound at the monitor for off center-line viewers. If that's not a factor in your house, then skip the center channel and spend the money on better main (front) speakers.

Hey Boat, what's happening??

I have to concur with both of the above. But in addition to how much you want to spend, I must also ask you how big your room is as well (as well as the acoustics of it). The reason I ask you what size your room is "is" because that's going to play a major part in what size TV you should get, if you should desire to upgrade the TV as well. To a point, I may have to slightly disagree with Onhwy61 in reference to a 27-inch TV being too small for the video portion of the home theater system. As I have a very small bedroom, I am currently using a 27-inch TV in my home theater system as well, and I find the set in my system in the room that it is located in humungous. So, that goes to say then, if you have a very small room and all, then a 27-inch set is all you're going to be able to put inside of it. But now, if your bedroom is bigger than mine (and mine is 12 x 12 x 14), or if you are going to be using a moderate sized room, then it would benefit you go ahead and upgrade to a bigger TV then (in which only then and only then, I'll be looking at a 35-inch or 36-inch model). That's just something else for you to consider if you are thinking about making the TV one of your areas for upgrading your system.

But other than that, you have to determine as to how far you want to go in upgrading your system and come up with a budget before we can throw out some recommendations and suggestions to you. But what ever you do, unless you have a whole wad of money to blow on the whole shebang at one time, I would think seriously about upgrading a piece or two at a time and space the whole thing out over a period of time. Depending on what you want your system to do, the whole thing may take you two-to-three years to complete (it took me a year-and-a-half to get to the point in which I am at now, and now, I am looking at speaker systems right now. So that means I'm still not finished yet). But whatever you decide to do, put as much money as possible into the components and get the best components your budget can buy. If you do that right from the start, then that would cut down, or speed up consequent upgrades later on down the line. That would be my suggestion right now.

I hope that this is some sort of help to you.

--Charles--