Question For Those That Watch Movies/TV Through Your Two Channel System

I just watched a Blu-ray movie in 5.1....could hardly understand the words.   That's true of tv as well.....sometimes it comes through fine...other times bad.  I think they produce it at a low resolution rate.

One thing you could try is disconnecting all the speakers except the center, and then placing your head just a couple of feet away from the center channel, on-axis. From there see if the dialogue you had trouble understanding is clear or muddy.

If it is clear in this situation, then the speaker's location, its interactions with the room, other speakers, and your usual seating location are the culprit. Some of that may be addressable to some degree.

@ericsch The primary benefit of a center channel is to lock the dialogue (or other centered sounds) into coming from the location of the display for people who are not sitting equidistant from the left and right speakers (assuming the main speakers are located symmetrically and equidistant from the center of the display).

If everyone sits "in the middle" then a center channel isn't needed, since dialogue will sound like it is coming from the center when reproduced by your left and right speakers. However this is unlikely in a home unless everyone is far away from the display. The possible distraction of dialogue not matching where a viewer sees the speaker, for someone sitting off-center, might be more of a quality loss than whatever improvement you get from using higher-quality 2-channel equipment.

Adding 2-channel equipment with HT bypass as suggested by @bkeske would be the easiest way to get any sonic improvements for music listening while still maintaining the status quo for movies and TV watching. But it means more equipment and a slightly more complicated setup.