Yeah 7.1 is cool and soundlbaster cards support it and there is the creative speakers (same company) that have the 7 satelites and the sub, but configuration for the 6.1 makes more sense to the audiophile. Having a rear center, front center and four surrounds (front left,right and rear left right) is what most audiophiles set up. While you can have infinite speakers at some point there is diminishing returns, you have to differentiate data to the separates and that more wire, more power to each speaker at some point it gets crazy (unless your doing wireless and clear no audiophile does that). Mostly 7.1 is just upmixing a 6.1 or 5.1 soundtrack which you are really relying on a program to interpate the data in a certain way and the positioning of the speakers is not the same as a 6.1. To some degree more is better, but with most I talk to in the high-end audio field they really don't care for 7.1...that said they all love the 6.1 DTS soundtracks to show off a system. I heard a system last week in Tweeter for a 6.1 setup... sick. Anyway there are no 7.1 DVD's I know of (few 6.1)and same goes for dvd-audio and SACD. Anyway this is a lengthy answer, but I think the key for future of audio is better sourcing, higher bit-rates and software, decoding along with the multipositional speakers to give a true enveloping sound and less of a dilineated positional sound that is not reflective of real life of real audio (e.g. a concert experience). All that said, who knows.

Of course, Rikter, is a resident expert on audio/video systems, all things techie, and I agree Rikter Blu-Ray is the future. And even you may end up getting the PS3