Does anyone have a good recommendation for the best quality home theater platform?

I went through this when building my home theater system. Read all the reviews, went to every store in the greater Seattle area, listened to everything I could find. Even brought a few things home to audition. Tried everything. Started with A/V receivers, graduated to separates, paying attention to everything- how they sound with movies, with music, with the different codecs. Everything from very affordable to megabuck high end as this was going into a great big home theater room that was the centerpiece of a major remodel.

The unexpected conclusion I came to after all of this is that for whatever amount of money you have to spend the best result you can get is with a traditional two channel stereo system. Yeah, I know. Flies in the face of the party line. But its just a fact. Which in hindsight makes total sense. Whatever amount of money you have, it will always buy you a lot better speakers if its two than if its 5. You simply cannot buy a 5 channel amp that sounds as good as a 2 channel amp. Not for the same budget. Speaker cables? Interconnects? Power cords? The situation is even worse.

Classic case of more is not better.

Who said anything about a 5 channel amplifier? :)

I run 5 monoblocks.

Best,
E

Buy integra/onkyo processor and get an upgrade on this website www.audio-upgrade.com. you will be surprised.

Your question is a bit vague...What’s the budget #1?  is this room already finished or are you starting from scratch?  How big is your room going to be?  What do you want it to do?  Want to watch multiple things at once i.e. sports on different channels? Do you want a projector with a drop down screen or one fixed to a wall ? Would you rather have a big flat panel TV or one behind the drop down screen or multiples behind it?  What do you watch or listen to?  Do you stream movies or do you have 500 Blu-Rays or both?  Do you stream music? Do you have a record player?  Is this going to be a combo type room where you want great stereo listening in here as well or do you want it dedicated to movie watching?  How about PS4 or XBOX? 
If it’s just movies and games and it can be done, I would put in a Dolby Atmos, DTS-X, IMAX type system consisting of 7.1.4 as a minimum and maybe wire for some future channels, but again, depends on size of the room.  Do you want all built in speakers or free standing out in the room?  Free standing will sound better than built-ins and running a pre/processor with separate amps will sound better than receivers and having dedicated 20amp circuits to plug it all in will be a huge help!
A lot more questions based on your answers...Hope this gives some direction and things to think about though...

Check out JBL sysnthesis.
its pretty darn good stuff..