Thanks everyone, for responding. Based on all that's been said here and my extensive browsing of these and other forums over the weekend (yup, my wife was not happy), I think I'll give the axiom centers a go. I'll also give the phantom mode a shot once the mains come in, to see if that works better.

One thing I failed to clarify earlier was that although the room is 20x15x8, the speakers will go on the long wall, so the seating position will be about 12ft from them. I would prefer to get the VP100 over the VP150 (only because the VP100 is a better fit sizewise - I don't have a big TV right now). I'm hoping I don't lose too much soundwise.

It was mentioned in some of the posts that ray3 and maybe neverhappy did a test of the vp100 and the vp150 and did not find a significant difference between the two. Could someone point me to ray3's original post, please? I didn't have much luck locating it.

Thanks again!