Doing a fun poll let vote lol cheers. 
Need money also
there’s nothing perfect in this world. even if one have a substantial budget that allows one to throw in and get an immediate HT system setup, one day, this one individual will face palm oneself when come across another setup that may be cheaper, cost on par, or little expensive as own “one time throw in, shotgun setup”, performs a step or few steps higher than own setup in sight and sound quality.
in this hobby, it’s about contend… feel comfortable even if the gear chosen is not uber flashy to bring envious eyes but meets own requirement.
do it slowly, thru studying the potentials of the specs and combinations to build up the product.
my first “HT” setup was a 20inch TOSHIBA CRT TV with a mono VCR and a minicompo aka boombox with detachable speakers roughly 40yrs ago… way before Dolby Pro-Logic becomes a mainstream format to chase about after i finished my NS.
in this ERA, my suggestion to any noobs who come to me for advice, i would suggest to them, “any HT is not a HT without the basic foundation of visual display”. deal with display first, with consideration of sitting distance to achieve angle of panoramic view, to determine what size of display to decide on and… comfortable.
next, will be source. be it the apps in the TV or media player that connects externally that u’ll trust in delivering qualities on sight and sound.
lastly would be sound. though we may be living in object driven directional surround sound formats such as Atmos, DTS-X as well as Auros… if one lives in a small and tight apartment, one would not be able to have a proper moderate setup, with an AVR, plus 5 channel ear level speakers, minimum 1 subwoofer and 2 over the head speakers arrangement. a simple soundbar with virtualization is good enough to polish the sound from the TV. a soundbar with multichannel separation is good to give some enhancement over virtualization. lastly, for those hungry with more oomph from the impacts and bass from full separate setup, an AVR with multi-channel satellite speakers and a dedicated sub will be a standard requirement. then, polish ur way up, to full blown speakers setup on size, as well as AVR sound processing capability.
during such long process, something will often pop up in sight and sound development that may cause a distraction and put one into a u-turn. however when u’re making that u-turn to restart the trip, ask urself, “does it worth that mileage?”
be contend in some way, that u’ve reached the milestone in this hobby, look out for another milestone, not forgetting how much fuel u can buy with the disposable monies u have in ur wallet/savings to reach the next milestone.
This is the most important aspect! I can’t agree this sentence more. You can have the best gears but sound just so so only and vice versa, but the fella is still happy on what he has achieved.
One can only improve when he takes on an advice humbly. Then again it is up to individual to follow the given advice, and the advice is just a 3rd party opinion on what he think it is that’s all. 
To each his own…
A) Budget ( how much you want to spent )
B) Space you have .
C) The looks you want Clean hidden look or All expose .
D) Preference Big sound (HT ) with Stereo ,Karaoke , TV Or Big Picture of Screen & PJ
These are what i will ask the client , base the 4 list will be able to design and built to their requirement .
I’ve read this thread multiple times and thought long and hard about the essence of this question.
I think there’s a couple broad aspects, mainly split between the user experience, which drives the expectations.
Secondly on the equipment, specs and performance.
First on the user experience. It’s really a learning journey, and most HT fans progress along this journey. One might have started in the 90s with a computer monitor and the golden era of PC 5.1 or 7.1 speaker systems, and upgraded to full TV and avr systems. As the experience grows, so does the expectations.
This is where the poison danger comes… When visiting other kaki setup, and then realizing that there are further improvements to be had.
Can say it is good, can say it is bad. Comparison is the theft of joy, etc. But such is life.
2ndly on the gear aspect. For some in this hobby, the gear is the means to and end. I have seen people who have a setup that was put together 10 or even 20 yrs ago and never change it anymore. They’ve been enjoying the system ever since.
For the rest of us, the gear and the upgrade is the end itself. We use movies and demo clips to listen to our system, 
But actually from my experience putting together the living room system , the level of equipment to have a really impressive and transformative movie watching experience is not that demanding. Setup and calibration with auto EQ goes a long way.
Mine is Creative Gigaworks 7.1 S750, followed by Logitech Z906