big screen - two channel system enough for dialog?

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I have a center channel in my system and I have a 240" screen. I've watched movies in stereo with only the front mains engaged and the dialog sounded just fine, and while watching the movie, having no center channel did not call attention to itself and I thoroughly enjoyed the movies.

Before I went whole hog and installed a surround system, I watched movies on a big screen in stereo for years and never had a problem with the dialog being unintelligible.
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Marakanetz, I can comfortably seat eight people in one row facing the screen on couches. In a pinch I can seat another four along the side walls(two on each side). I show everything from blockbusters to romances and children's movies. I also watch all sporting events on the system. 90% of the time I watch movies alone. 90% of all television I watch is on the system. My 15 year-old son uses the system for video games on his X-Box and PlayStation with friends. He likes Halo, Call Of Duty and Assassin's Creed. I play old school Defender. I have to replace a projector bulb every couple of years for about $250.

Tswei99, before I installed the system, jets only flew from left to right. Now they fly overhead from front to back as they should. I installed the surround system because I wanted total immersion. I have a huge room and I wanted to take full advantage of it, I installed the biggest screen that would fit. Surprisingly stereo gives excellent immersion without a center channel if you include rear speakers. No doubt about it, a surround system beats stereo, but stereo is very good too....it is no slouch.

But as a some above has said, you do have to sit in the sweet spot for the dialog to be dead center if you're listening in stereo. But, even if you are not sitting dead center, the dialog is intelligible and good, just not centered.
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Marakanetz, I could seat at least two additional rows of eight people in my theater, but the people in the second and third rows would not be able to see over the heads of the people in the front row. The second and third rows would not be elevated. Therefore, I keep it to eight people in one row so everyone has a great seat. For kids movies I've had as many as 25 kids over for a movie...most of them sat on the floor and they loved it.

My theater is not a dedicated theater, it is also my living room and my music listening room.
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I've gone through 3 or 4 center speakers, and was never satisfied with any of them, due to their inability to render the human voice as well as my L/R tower speakers. I did not find any improvement in dialog intelligibility when using a center speaker. The biggest drawback with all of the speakers I tried was that they could not reproduce the baritone quality of male voices, no matter what crossover settings I tried.

Agreed. That's why I use a full-range tower laying horizontally as my center channel. Anything smaller was inadequate and a waste of time.
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Marakanetz, the link below should give you an idea of the
room and the layout. When the room is my everyday living
room, the couches are along the walls. When I get ready to
watch movies, I move the couches so that they face the
screen. I sit 30 feet from the screen. You can see the
center channel on the floor at the bottom of the screen, I
place it on a platform that raises it two feet off the floor
at movie time. The room is 22 ft wide, 70 ft long and 22
feet high

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vhome&1178590685
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Rainwright, in theory it may be a standing wave nightmare, but in reality, the room sounds incredible from top to bottom. I have no such problems with my room. I am currently running a 7.1 system.

I am considering adding height and wide channels. Additional rear speakers in the ceiling are also under consideration.
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