With a lot of effort, I've gotten my wife to agree to put a plasma in our new living room. But the catch is that it's going to have to be very "discrete", and will essentially be surrounded by a wood framing face. This won't be an issue for the screen, of course, but what about the front speakers? What will I lose in audio quality if only the grill peeks out of the wood face, and the back of the speaker is behind the wood? Do I need to get a specific "in wall" model, or will we (not audiophiles, or people very, very into all this) be okay with whatever regular wall mountable speakers we opt to go with?
More often than not, you'll ruin your speaker performance by shoving them inside a piece of furniture.
If I were you, I'd remove the skirt, and tell her what you need. If she wont even allow you to have a 'tiny sliver' of pleasure in your own home, then you'll probably need to get rid of her, and keep the speakers.
Either that, or you can cave and stick to watching all of your movies and TV on the little 27" in your bedroom. That way you wont offend her decorations in the livingroom.
You do own half the house, dont you?? Dont you think you have more than a 0% say on what goes into your living room?? She probably chose the carpet, furniture, nicknacks...etc, etc..etc. Why not explain to her that you have needs too??
I think msa is thinking about the plasma's built-in speakers. They are crappola anyways so I say go-ahead and cover them up. You are missing half of the fun without a good home theatre system to go with your fantastic TV. With your wife's taste you might be stuck with something like the Bose Lifestyle 38. BTW, can you believe that the $3000 Lifestyle 38 system don't even have component video output? The best is S-Video.