....expanding from car audio into home...need help

one thing I beleive is important is that the center's sound matches the mains. For this reason, I would stick with the same brand/line for these 3 speakers. Also, I have a pretty high end Yamaha receiever, and I can tell you that although there are some very good 4 ohm speakers out there that you would be better off getting 8 ohm speakers if your going to drive them with a receiver. I love dynaudio audience speakers but frankly they just don't mate that well to receivers in opinion because of this.

There are a ton of speakers out there that would be a good match for the system it appears your trying to build. first you need to decide if you want direct or dipole speakers. For dipole I would chose Definitive Tech, but I prefer direct speakers so I'd recommend Paradigm. They are great for modest priced home theater, and thier studio line is actually pretty good with music too. They are not really considered high end by alot of people on this board, but they do offer a good price to performance ratio. I have a feeling they will offer the sound your looking for.

most of the sound on movies is through the center channel. True you can get all the dialogue through the mains, but why?

Not saying that your doing this Tireguy... but I find it amazing that alot of audiophiles look down on HT like it's somehow less than 2-channel audio. Audiophiles talk about imaging and accuracy all the time but I swear they would do away with the center channel and even if the TV if possible. I guess voices comming from 6 feet to the right of the TV doesn't have to match the character on the screen to be accurate.

One of the things that influnced my decision to buy the main speakers I did was if there was a good center to match them. Right now I'm doing without surrounds, sometimes I make do with only the TV's speakers, but for true HT, all the speakers, especialy the center is needed.