(Note: The following post does not take low budgets in to any consideration whatsoever.)
Bose is absolutely overrated. I really hate their sound. I am also not fond of speakers made by Infinity (extremely weak lows) or Klipsh (kind of an all around "blah"). But I'd buy either of those before Bose.
What I don't like about most home theaters these days is that they are very "boomy" sounding. They crank up the subwoofers to high heaven and do the same with the surrounds. This is especially bad when they route the low frequencies from the main channels to the subwoofer since they usually have these dinky, weak front speakers. Personally I would install 7 identical speakers around (no wimpy little horizontal center channel... that's the most important speaker in the whole setup) and a competent subwoofer. The speakers should be big enough to produce bass on their own. Believe it or not, I've had great luck with floor-standing KLH speakers. Mine are fairly old (10+ years), so their newer ones may or may not be as good if they even still exist. Avoid floor standing speakers that are super skinny with a bunch of tiny little 5 inch woofers. Those are all style, no punch. Get something with at least a 12-inch woofer (yes, for each and every speaker). 3-way speakers are great.
Avoid Sony receivers as the ones I've seen do not allow you to have discrete subwoofer in 5.1 mode or above without also routing the lows from the front speakers in Pro Logic or less modes. Pioneer and Kenwood have proven good to me so far.
You don't need Monster® Cable™ to hook all of this up. Go to monoprice.com and get their stuff. It is very, very good quality and the prices are insanely low. I could not believe it when I saw it the first time. I hate to sound like a walking advertising for them, but it's worth it, they are great!
I used to install movie theaters as my job. Real movie theaters, not the home stuff. I can tell you how it should sound, and that's why most people's home theater systems sound so incredibly bad to me. Granted, many movie theaters don't even get it right when setting their levels and EQ, but those weren't set up by me.
