Home theater without center channel? Opinions?

I'm not really a fan of the center channel, although I favor the fantom center if it realistic. If I had a full blown HT room in a 10,000 sq ft home I guess I would.

Depending on your setup, your seating arrangement, etc, results will vary. What is usually sacrificed is an anchored center image from dialog and such, as you sit off-center. This may or may not be a problem, depending - like I said...it's variables.
I think the majority of the time, unless you are a single listener, the center will anchor things, and give a more solid presentation in most situations.
Still, there are those die-hard audiophiles that simply want this setup to be better, for bias reasons I find. That said, I myself have put together some rather good sounding higher end 2.1 channel setups. So I do know it can sound good when done right. It's still mostly just the shifty dialog problem thingy mostly.

To my surprise it's really not that bad without the center channel in place.

Unless you have a center that matches your mains exactly and is placed at the same height then then phantom center is probably slightly better for a small sweetspot area. Center is really only needed for off axis listeners.