My inlaws have had their TV going only through their stereo for as long as I've known them. I always thought it was too loud and kind of pointless (volume is due to his hearing issues).
But then I got my distributed AV setup and wired it all in to the speakers instead of the TV monitor, which came with the house and didn't have speakers. And now that I have my Axioms, I'll never go back.
The sound is compressed and imperfect - on some channels more than others - but it's still nice to have crowd noise all around in sports. The occasional unexpected surround commercial is kind of neat too. That new Cadillac (I think) commercial is pretty cool.
