Well, Peter, I guess I'd quibble just a little.
I think this is what "The Best" soundbars do. I don't think achieving that standard is at all common, as the implementation requires DSP and multiple (many?) drivers. It seems that "most" soundbars are simply a L/C/R in one box. So, I think that the Yamaha Sound Projectors, the ZVox products and some others are meaningfully more capable of an immersive soundfield. I'm not sure that you can't have a "good" soundbar without the multiple-driver surround processing.
But you'd probably still need a pretty big box to achieve "good".
