Phillips 32PW9617....sound improvements ?

[lespaton]

I have had a Phillips 9617 since early June and am delighted overall with both sound and vision. This set has a built-in DD 5.1 decoder and wireless rear L/R speakers come supplied with the set. Front L/R output is piped thru a high quality stereo setup into B&W speakers. A Gallo subwoofer is hooked into the pre-outs of the stereo amp. So the TV acts as a centre speaker and also drives the rears. DVD audio is piped into the TV decoder via a good quality digital co-ax. To me the home cinema experience sounds just great....but then this is my first experience of surround sound.
Question is....will I see a significant improvement in surround sound quality by buying an AV amp, centre speaker and rear L/R. Has anyone with this set, or older Phillips set with same sound setup, done this and achieved a marked improvement ? If so, what kit did you buy or what kind of money did you spend to get the improvement ? I know I could get big improvements spending TAG, Lexicon or Meridian money, but can I achieve it spending Yamaha, Marantz or Denon money ?
Any real experiences out there, rather than educated opinions ?
Thanks.

 

[KeefyR]

I too have a 9617 that is using my Hifi speakers ( mission 753s driven by an audiolab 8000A) as front left and right.

I'm thinking of adding a sub, but the sub output of the TV is apparently muted when the "external front speakers" are set to "on" in the setup menu. Anyone know if this can be changed-- otherwise I'll have to take the sub output from the DVD player which will mean that it'll only work on DVDs and also is another separate volume control to play with.
The TV manual is not clear it says

"the subwoofer output is muted when external speakers are set to 'on' "

Does that mean that the TV subwoofer itself is muted, or that the output from the "subwoofer out" socket is muted ??

The latter would make no sense to me at all..... or am I missing something ??

 

[KeefyR]

One other thought I'm new to 5.1 sound too but you say

The sub is hooked into the preamp outs on the amp

Surely that means you're feeding the sub with the output of the Front left and right channels rather than the discrete Sub channel.

THis means that the sub will just produce the Low freaquency part of the Front left and right which I don't think tyou would have intended ...... or again..... am I missing something

 

[lespaton]

On this particular TV the sub output is fed to the front L/R when the front speakers are set up in the TV sound menu as "external amp". It works for me. LFE's from DD 5.1 films sound very natural and very effective.
But back to my orginal question....who has added an external AV amp to this TV and found a big improvement ?