Soundbar to Replace Front Speakers?

[panthro]

Hi guys, I've got Tannoy 5.1 surround speakers set up with my GT30 TV and Yamaha 570 amp. I was thinking of consolidating/replacing the 2 fronts and centre speaker with a soundbar. Would this work? The room isn't a specific cinema room, just our living room. Reasons for doing this are to:

1. Run the soundbar only when watching TV, bypassing the amp. Keep the surround sound for movies.
2. Get rid of the wires/clutter.

Thoughts?

 

[lucid]

A soundbar is typically an all-in-one unit, so you have speakers, amplification, some processing and a limited number of inputs. The idea of running that as a front channel set-up and somehow integrating it with the existing AV amp, rear speakers and sub is at best going to be horribly complex and at worst a complete non-starter. (Or maybe that should be the other way around )

There are L,C,R speakers sets arranged in a bar to go under a TV. Look up the Monitor Audio R One HD. It's £500, but there's currently some clearance stock in the channel for half that price. All things considered, that would probably be the most cost effective and the simplest solution without ditching all the benefits of the AV amp surround system.

If you want rid of all the wiring etc then go for an all-in-one soundbar and ditch the Yam/Tannoy surround completely. Beware though; sound out from the TV is most likely to be plain old stereo PCM and you'll probably completely lose compatibility with DTS. The way around this is to buy a soundbar with multiple inputs and support to decode all the surround formats. So you end up swapping one set of wires for another. If that still sounds like a good idea to you then I'd strongly recommend one of the Yamaha YSP range of soundbars. Go for one with HDMI as well as optical and coax. Start off by looking at the YSP-2200 (£600)