evening all. I am looking for some advice on some small cube speakers to use as mains for a 7.1 setup off of a yahmaha 563 receiver.

The wife hates big speakers in the living room. For fathers day we upgraded our entire setup. 52" plasma, the new receiver and new sub. Even got rocket fish for wireless surround speakers. Now what kind of sucks is that the house we rent has really nice Bose cubes built into one wall in the living room. But because of our furniture, tv and a fireplace, I am forced to use them as the rear surrounds.

We are currently using, and please don't laugh heh, 2 of the 4 Cambridge sound works cubes that we have had for years for our computers. They sound great when plugged into a sound card. The set came with a small powered sub, the four speakers and a volume control knob. Two speakers were the front speakers, two for the rear. They all hooked into the sub via phono jacks. When we got the new setup, I simply hacked off the phono jacks and wired them into the new receiver.

Now they don't sound bad! But I know it is going to be the case that I will hear a nicer set and they will sound like trash.

So, we are looking for a mixture of quality and price. We have an htpc with an ht omega 7.1 card in it that really works well for us. We are using the htpc with VMC for movies only. We are ripping the movies to the 1 tb hard drive. We like to have a nice home theater experience.

Any suggestions on a good set of small cube speakers to use for mains?

You might want to look at the Klipsch Synergy Quintet system.  You can currently get the Quintet II for $249 from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_e?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=klipsch+synergy+quintet.  Certainly not the most spactecular speakers ever (no small speakers are), and they don't come with a sub, but they are a good system for the money, should sound better than what you currently have.  These speakers will work well with a decent sub in a small-mid size room.  For a large room you really need larger speakers, not sure how your rental works, but you can also get some very good in ceiling or in wall speakers (usually have a much higher WAF factor).  Also, if you are doing movies, there really isn't a big benefit to a 7.1 system at this point (almost no movies are done in 7.1), for games 7.1 can be great, but for movies, its benefit is negligable.

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Just my $0.02.

I agree with Ryan here on all counts. I've used those Klipsch's on a couple installs where acoustic vibrance is subdued by carpeted floors and window treatments. If you have tile or wood floors, and notice any hint of reverb just while talking, the QII's seem just too colourful on higher frequencies. Perhaps a matched set like Boston Acoustics MCS-130?

As for 7.1, your room dimensions may not support the spatial imaging needed to take proper advantage of it. So if your listening area is square, I wouldn't get caught up in it. Blu-Ray is the only source you will get 7.1 for movies. Give us your room dimensions and anything else about your environment.