It is odd that many manufacturers try to keep the worlds of HT and audio separate, but so do many consumers with separate HT and stereo systems. In my own case my priority has always been the music, so I have used my high quality stereo system (Quad electrostats and all that) to reproduce TV sound. For me adding equivalent rear speakers has never been realistic, both financially and more importantly physically because I would really not want to have five big stats (at a minimum) in my living room. I find stereo HT through really good speakers quite convincing, and more convincing than through five or seven little boxes.
As for analogue outputs on the TV, my Panasonic plasma of a few years old still has them, but my children's more recent lcd tv's don't anymore. This is a very price competitive market, and not having an analogue output saves the DAC and the connector. So my son uses the digital stereo output of his TV into his DAC/preamp and my daughter uses the headphone output of her TV into her all analogue amplifier.
The same issue exists with modern cheaper BD players: they mostly only have an hdmi output, and neither an analogue output nor a digital stereo output. So if you want to use your BD player as a cd player, you have to either inconveniently route the signal though your tv, or buy a better BD player.
As for analogue outputs on the TV, my Panasonic plasma of a few years old still has them, but my children's more recent lcd tv's don't anymore. This is a very price competitive market, and not having an analogue output saves the DAC and the connector. So my son uses the digital stereo output of his TV into his DAC/preamp and my daughter uses the headphone output of her TV into her all analogue amplifier.
The same issue exists with modern cheaper BD players: they mostly only have an hdmi output, and neither an analogue output nor a digital stereo output. So if you want to use your BD player as a cd player, you have to either inconveniently route the signal though your tv, or buy a better BD player.