I have a problem in that my wife bless her cotton socks does not share my passion for home cinema. Therefore I am investigating getting a stereo, that includes a Dolby Digital decoder and DVD (sneeky eh). There are several around made by Aiwa Technics and Panasonic, but as yet I have found non of them that have had benchtests carried out on them. HAs anyone any experience of such systems and can they recommend the best.

the panasonic one looks very well built comapred to the sony and morre powerful an all round nice bit of kit yummy

Technics and Panasonic are two brands from the same japanese company (Matshusita). IMHO, Panasonic has very good products in DVD, Videos and TVs. Technics is an audio brand, but be careful because has three or four product lines, from "poor" to "high" quality. IMHO, Aiwa hasn't products with good audio quality. Take a look to Yamaha audio equipments: sometimes there are very good offers. And try to buy thes best speakers you can!!! (May be it will be the best investment of your audio equipment)