AV Receiver Reviews

"My argument in one sentence is: Three channels in front, four in back—what’s wrong with this picture?"

Surround channels in film were never rear channels. The surround channels in cinemas always ran along the side of the auditorium and then followed along the back wall. To this day, you will see the majority of the surround speakers are still arrayed along the side of the auditorium. When surround EX was investigated by Home THX and Dolby for the release of "The Phantom Menace", the question was how can we add additional channels to the 5.1 already imprinted Dolby SR-D soundtrack on film. The solution was a matrixing of LS and RS to achieve a center rear channel. This evolved eventually into two rear channels. However, please don't refer to surround channels as "rear channels".

I think "triple-threat" should read "triple-treat"?

I am curious. Why is it pointless to conflate theater tech with home theater tech, when the program material played back on the latter is overwhelmingly the former? There are respected manufacturers who do name their surround channels by recommended location (LR/RR), but these folks have a deep history in surround formats (say Ambisonics) where the source encoding was based on geometric symmetry.

Perhaps I misread your intent here, as four speakers in the back of the room certainly would provide a skewed sound field, but even Dolby has always recommended a placement of surround speakers to the side and just behind the listener, and not in hte back of the room.