state of the art home theatre....

Niles In-wall speaker 8700 model with the alum/ti 8" bass drivers! Pretty amazing speakers for in walls.
Ceiling speakers SUCK.. but WAF love them.

in-walls are Designed for WAF.

True, I agree WAF for inwalls. But I do think wall monted compact monitors(even in white) can be an attractive and much better sounding alternative...yet another reason I vote for the M&K K7 system with K4 dipoles for surrounds w/sub. Even with a Denon Receiver(Outlaw separates stomps however), there's no way to really go wrong here!...stellar sound, trust me.(I do this for a living, and have sold from Polk/Paradigm/NHT all the way to Wilson/Theil/Logan's/S.Fabers, you name it I like the k7 system for your dad's scenario

If you're looking for WAF, Wives generally prefer in-wall speakers -- they hate speakers intruding into the room. You can hide a sub-woofer behind a couch or under an end table. They also freak when they see a stack of components and more than one remote control. If they are not audiophiles, get them a home theater receiver and save everyone a lot of hassle. Wives also love plasma displays -- they don't intrude into the room. For a compromise, get him a pair of nice speakers for his front left and right so he can have quality two-channel music, maybe his wife will be okay if only two speakers intrude into the room -- it is worth a shot.

Over on AVScience forum, everyone seems to have Panasonic plasma displays and Pioneer 49TXi or 59TXi or Denon receivers. Audiogon and AVS are two completely different sub-cultures. There are quite a few over there who refuse to believe separates are better than their receivers. The ones who are into music seem to have either the Pioneer 59AVi or the Denon 5900 as their front ends, both are Universal Players, both employ a firewire type connector for High Rez and either HDMI or DVI video outputs.

Also --- the remote controll you have to get them is Universal Remote's Home Theater Master MX-500. It is a Universal remote -- the best I have ever seen and it is $100. You can program every remote into it and you can set it to mix and match functions. For example, you can set the volume control to work with the receiver *while* the DVD player buttons control the DVD player -- no need to switch back and forth from DVD player to receiver.
You can also set it so that when watching a DVD, the screen will switch to DVD. Once you program it, it is easy to understand and it is easy to program.
The most well-thought-out and intuitive universal remote control I've seen --someone was thinking when they designed this thing. This has WAF all over it.