Xenon:

To your question, I could connect a 7th speaker and have an open power-amp channel for the input. I was trying to avoid this approach due to the way, the room is configured and the difficulty I will have in installing the extra speaker in an ascetically pleasing manner. Currently, my wife accepts the 6th speaker because of the 1050's limitation. Its the only speaker that really has some visible wiring and adding a 7th will only make this worse.

This may be a case, where I should analyze whether I would be better off at 5.1. I originally had a 5.1 system but with certain DVD's, the 1050 could not decode the rear signals properly and was dropping most of the rear signal. The work around from Outlaw was to add a 6th speaker (this is all posted in the 1050 archive somewhere back in 2003) and it made a significant difference. I am now in essence trying to fix that fix. I know that if I remove the 6th speaker, I will pick up bonus points from my wife's point of view. Any suggestions on how to conduct this type of evaluation?