I have a question for you. People in our business build their own home theater rooms (in the basement or whatever) themselves ALL the time. We go out and get the best pricing on lumber we can find (we buy it as a contractor if we can, who wouldn't), and wire and build the room ourselves.
When we do that, our we stealing the food out of a builders mouth? Is there something morally wrong with doing the work ourselves, as long as we aren't endangering someone with shoddy work? Would a builder who told me where to buy cheap lumber be hurting his fellow builders.
Now, if I have three contractors come over to my house and bid on the job, try to suck as much knowledge out of them as I can, while all the while intending to bypass them and build it myself that is inappropriate as hell.
Otherwise, I'm just a guy who probably doesn't have the money to pay someone $20,000 to build a room for me when I can do it myself on weekends for $2000. Or maybe I'm just a cheap son of a bitch. Either way, IMO I'm not harming anyone else.
This thread is really dealing with a bunch of different issues and we may be closer to agreeing on some of them then it appears. Here are a few things that I DO think are inappropriate: 1. Visiting showrooms and doing long auditions of components (speakers, projectors etc.) with salesmen and pretending as though you are interested in purchasing from them when you really intend to purchase on the Internet. 2. Getting quotes from people when you have no intention of even considering doing business with them. Then taking the quote and trying to use it as a "system design".
