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My Dad's birthday is coming up and he told me he wants a new pair of speakers for our family room. Long story short is that our family room's technology is stuck in the 1990's. We have a very old generic receiver, 23 inch CRT TV, 2-in one DVD/VHS player, and a 6-disc CD changer.

I'm basically very weary of spending money to upgrade such an old system. My dad has spoken about buying an LCD/LED TV on several occasions and I think it will happen in the next year or so (along with a blu ray player). The receiver is so old that I don't think it even has an optical audio connector. Instead of buying speakers, I want to get him started along the path to High Def.

My parents are certainly not audioholics and price is the biggest factor in upgrading their sound system. I've been looking at sound bar systems since they are very easy to set up, but I think if I bought a sound bar system, it wouldn't be compatible with our current devices since the CD changer is composite, as well as the TV and DVD player and the Sound Bar systems I see on the cheaper side don't have a lot of composite inputs and outputs. So I think I might need to get a receiver that has enough old-school imputs to satisfy the equipment we have now, but also has HDMI in/out so when they finally upgrade to TV and Blu Ray it will be an easy transition. The problem I see with the receiver route though is that there are a lot of messy cables to deal with. Can someone recommend a very basic receiver?