Vacceo
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I have my mother a pair of LS50 WII and a KC62 for a small living room with a TV.Today I'm where you are, I moved to a house, I have a dedicated TV room and it's big enough I can pull the sofa off the wall and there is just enough space to have surrounds in a good location. I'm now focused on improving the sound, next step on that journey being room improvements.
But a couple years ago I lived in a small apartment in the city core, my living room served multiple purposes and there was simply nowhere to put surrounds and the sofa wasn't going to move off the wall - other uses of the room were a priority over HT.
I suspect many people live with those constraints and put their TV wherever they can, rather then designing a room for HT. Lots probably just using the TV itself for audio or else if they want to upgrade the sound they get a soundbar, maybe one that comes with a wireless subwoofer, and call it a day
But even a pricey soundbar can't match what you can get from a pair of proper speakers, if for no other reason than you can put the speakers further apart and create a proper sound stage. Add a center and a sub and anything with even a 5" woofer for LR and it's a huge step up from a soundbar, for potentially not much more money.
Plus buying high quality speakers gives you an upgrade path. If one day you move to a house, like I did, the bookshelf speakers that used to be your LR become your surrounds and you invest in a pair of towers. Ok, at that point you needed a full AVR.
But what if you could spend $200 for a little starter 3.1 AVR, invest your money instead in some good bookshelves, get yourself a nice sub?
That's a good place to start, and maybe for a lot of people all they will ever really need.
ETA - Plus they probably only have ONE input, either their Smart TV itself, or a streaming device like a Roku. Their "AVR" might not even need HDMI if it can do 3.1 or 5.1 from TOSLINK, or it has an HDMI that is a straight pass through from their steamer, except it splits out the audio.
The result is milles away from a standard sound bar and it does not have room correction or multichannel.
If adding extra channels were as easy as plugging them (a center would be quite nice), that could be quite an advantage.
Add room correction to the mix and you have a great, upgradeable path.