I've never felt bose products were worth the money, nor that they sound particularly good. For $1400, you really have a lot of options. One thought would be the Sony STR-DA2000ES digital receiver and the toshiba 3960 dvd/cd player. You can probably get both of these for ~$600, leaving $800 for speakers. This would give you a lot of options, either with full size speaker towers or with bookshelves coupled with a subwoofer.
I've got Soliloquy SAT-5's paired with a Pinnacle babyboomer sub, which I picked up for about $900 for the set. I run those behind the 3960 and the Sony 3000ES (a bit more wattage than the 2000ES, but more or less the same thing). This is a really nice sounding system which I would really recommend, though it a bit more than her budget. It does give you an idea of what you could go for in the $1400 range.
The major shift is that this is not at all a small, compact solution which really might be more appealing to her than overall sound.