i feel your pain. i got a bunch of mid-fi stuff given to me, not the best, but better than what i have at the moment, the things that i really needed to work, didn't work...making the rest of it useless. i sold it all and bought a v3 - a good decision if you ask me. for my playback i have a pretty decent onkyo 6.1 surround sound setup. its not awesome, but for your normal consumer grade setups, i think it fuggin rocks.
i watched lord of the rings - return of the king last night in dts es 6.1 and holy crap did it sound awesome.