Matt, I'd be in general agreement with most of those views as you describe them. On the separate center speaker point there are two advantages: the volume of the center channel can be increased independently of the mains to compensate for the low dialog level mixed into some movies; the center channel image stays anchored to the middle of the screen for off-axis listening, while the "phantom" center image shifts to the outside to stay in front of him as the listener moves to the outside(but not farther out than the speaker on that side).
