It's not too terribly bad to live with a 2.1 system, as long as you know the shortcomings. Essentially, like big_greg said, the vocals from movies will be a lot clearer if you have a dedicated center channel. There is a bigger reason why this is.
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In pretty much all movies, voices and certain movie sounds are mixed directly to the center channel. However, on many movies, the left/right speakers are used to provide "ambient reverberation" of the voices tracked to the center speaker. Sometimes this is based from real room microphones, but often the voice is ran through a delay/reverberation effect unit and then sent to left/right (to provide echo of voices in a room, for example). This center + left/right mix gives your ears a better definition of the voices. In some movies, the surround speakers are further used to extend that "room reverberation echo".
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If you just use 2.1 with only left/right speaker, your AVR or HT Processor can handle this, but the center channel sound is split and sent to the left/right, also along with the original left/right reverberation sounds. Because of this, with some movies, the voices and sounds could seem to have a weird echo and it can be harder to understand the voices in some movies because the source of the voice is no longer starting from the center channel and naturally extending to the left/right and the surrounds.
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In pretty much all movies, voices and certain movie sounds are mixed directly to the center channel. However, on many movies, the left/right speakers are used to provide "ambient reverberation" of the voices tracked to the center speaker. Sometimes this is based from real room microphones, but often the voice is ran through a delay/reverberation effect unit and then sent to left/right (to provide echo of voices in a room, for example). This center + left/right mix gives your ears a better definition of the voices. In some movies, the surround speakers are further used to extend that "room reverberation echo".
---
If you just use 2.1 with only left/right speaker, your AVR or HT Processor can handle this, but the center channel sound is split and sent to the left/right, also along with the original left/right reverberation sounds. Because of this, with some movies, the voices and sounds could seem to have a weird echo and it can be harder to understand the voices in some movies because the source of the voice is no longer starting from the center channel and naturally extending to the left/right and the surrounds.