Home Theatre speaker system for Blu-ray

[BigRedEE]

Hello everyone. I recently have caught the home theatre bug and have decided to add a surround sound system to my Sony TV and Panasonic BD Player. I am more of a video person but am now jumping into sound.

I am in college and live with three roommates and we enjoy playing music along with watching movies. The SQ is important to us, especially the bass. We live in a small appartment now but plan on moving to a house next year so i hope to get a system that has decent strength for an average living room.

I am planning on buying a Onkyo 605 reciever (over my original idea of the sony 720 or 820) mainly for the onboard HD codecs (that the 720 doesnt have) and the hdmi video upscaling (not in the 820).

My main question is what speakers i should use with the reciever. I have seen many people suggesting the polk RM6750 (and maybe adding the step up 10" sub from perhaps newegg) or building the a set starting with Monitor 50's and 30's. I have done a lot of research myself, but still would appreciate more opinions. For christmas I recieved the sony HTiB (the ht-ss2300, i think) but took that back to best buy, since i heard that the system was iffy based on others' reviews. I plan on using the money i got from that and adding some more for a budget of about $600-700 (300 for the reciever and 300-400 for the speakers; hopefully closer to 300). I have also looked at the onkyo speaker sets such as the ht540 and like that they are usually a 7.1 set (other than the ht240, which is 6.1), have a stronger sub than the RM6750, weren't too bad according CNET.

So basically (in no particular order),
1. RM6750 (maybe plus new sub or center channel)
2. ht540 (or other similar 7.1 set)
3. start with monitor 50's and build it up
4. another suggestion

Thanks a lot in advance! (and let me know if i am not abiding by any forum rules)