I really dislike having to install speakers all over the place to have surround sound and that’s why the Yamaha YSP line of digital sound “projectors” seems so cool (although I never actually owned one). Yamaha has a new model called YSP-500 that is roughly half the size of previous ones – At $650 usd, it is also less expensive.
In theory, the YSP can “analyze” your room and then adapt its many internal speakers to bounce the sound to create a very good surround sound. Not everyone lives in an empty box like me, so beware: if you have lots of “sound obstacles” of weirdly shaped walls that might be a problem.