Home theater without center channel? Opinions?

I really wish you wouldnt spread the matching center myth.

Well that is what they do in all the mix and mastering studios. They might use a smaller speaker from the same manufacturer for rears but they always use the same across the front.

If your criticism is that this is overly stringent and purist then I agree - for most people it certainly is.

Ofcourse a commercial application would do this as they have the deep pockets for it plus the space for it but even then it could be done other ways if need.

Well, I was experimenting with speaker cables the other day, and I robbed the center channel cable in order to use it with the front L/R speakers. So I set the receiver for "none" on center speaker. I was surprised at how good it sounds without the center speaker, including a decent centering of dialog in the soundstage. My front towers are much bigger and go much lower than the center, so I guess that may be helping the overall sound. The thing is, if you have large, high quality towers for fronts, it is really hard and really expensive to integrate a center that is on par. I've tried several center speakers, but I never seem to be satisfied with the way dialog sounds through them-resonance in male and some female voices, resulting in indistince dialog. Maybe I just haven't tried a good enough center speaker.

I finally set up a 5.1 HT room, mostly 2 channel

center is a little more obvious than 2 ch front but blends well, you should be able to go either way

I'm using a newer B&W center with B&W Matrix 2's with no problem

I use the backs for the surrounds coming from an Arcam AVR350 (no HDMI audio 7.1 source)I go 5.1 speakers not 7.1

I will be going from a Pioneer BDP 05 Blu Ray with analog outs. Should I get 7.1 channel interconnects and then have the processor figure out how to reconfigure to 5.1 channel speaker configuration? thanks
thanks

You just hook up 5.1 not 7.1
Your Processor wont be able to figure anything out, Analog is Analog and its a direct input that pretty much goes directly to volume only. The Blu Ray will be where you establish speaker settings. All you need to do is hook up the surround outputs and not the surround backs then you will be all set.