I have a wooden floor in my living room, all I did was run some conduit above the skirting its not very noticeable, alternatively if you can get some very thin cable you might be able to sllip it under the skirting (depends on if you have a gap like we have.)
What I can say is that a good suround system well set up should offset any small compromise you have to make in cosmetics.
I see from the other thread that you already have a DVD player, I don't understand why you would want to buy another one just because it has a built in decoder? At that price the quality of all the components is going to be pretty poor anyway and your limiting your upgrade options.
Heres what I would do
Buy an AV amp, as I said a half decent one can be had second hand for that money, my Marantz SR 5400 cost me less than £200 and a SR4200 can be had for less than £100, there are loads of other makes too, you can feed this with your current DVD player as long as it has a digital output.
What I would then consider is if I wanted small (lifestyle) speakers or larger ones. Lifestyle speakers like the Canton CD1s I have in my living room are nice and subtle. The drawback is they need a Sub because they can't reproduce tones below the mid range, the problem with this is that although bass is not very directional you still need to place the sub woofer well.
Larger speakers are good and initially you could run them without a sub and then add one later, believe me you will want one esspecially if you hear a decent system somewhere else
If you go lifestyle then I would get a set like the Canton CD1 or 101 which is the new version. The speakers have weight, the drivers are good quality and can reproduce sound well and the sub is good. The systems you have linked to with have light rubbishy drivers
Going with larger speakers would allow you to build your system gradually, you could start with stereo speakers and then find a matching centre. You'll want a centre pretty fast I would think, the centre is the channel which handles most of the speech and thats a big part of movies. You could then look at rears and a sub. So you would get a gradual upgrade path and be able to concentrate on the areas you would like to improve. Going in this direction also means that you would find you have to do a full system upgrade, you could for example upgrade you centre or buy a new AV amp and keep your speakers.
I've been in your situation and went from a TV through a stereo solution on to seperates and then through some serious upgrading. I now run two systems; a lifesyle system in the living room and an AV room with large speakers and a sub, so if you have any question then I'd be happy to try and help.
MB
