If I was to buy a 5.1 home cinema setup, would it work as "normal" stereo if I didn't want to bother with rear speakers or do I need to buy a 2.1 setup ?


Cheers in advance

yep, if you only have 2 speakers connected (or 3, as the .1 is the bass speaker) then it will only use 3, a left, a right, and a bass

mine has 2 sets of outputs, set A and set B

set A is plain stereo
set B is the surround set. but even with set B connected, you can still choose between 2 channel stereo and 5 channel surround

Yep. I use my panasonic one as a stereo. You can turn the speakers off you dont want. Most have a music setting aswell.

Cheers

When I got it home it has a switch to change between 2.1 and 5.1 anyway