And what's the benefit?

However many years ago, before the age of ".1" technologies, during the pure stereo, or simpler dolby pro-logic days, everyone used large full range front speakers. They were everywhere.

Now it seems everything has gone to the smallish 'bookshelf' type speaker and a seperate sub.

What caused this shift? The first bose systems and a band wagon? Did someone suddenly say, these new systems are so much better? Did people suddenly run out of room cause their TV's got bigger?

I'm just kinda curious when/why this revolution happened.

for my apartment as a sub would rattle the upstairs neighbor. Figure I'd get some ok/decent bass with the tower speakers for movies.

In a small enough room though, some small speakers can really turn it on;
Monitor Audio Radius 90's are great for not much money.
ProAc Response 1SC's are incredibly good for quite a bit of outlay.

Full range speakers will always sound better.

another words, most people cannot tell where they come from. That was the genesis of a subwoofer. However, with only 1 sub I can still tell the sound is not evenly distrubuted, so I've always opted for 2 sub configurations.
As far as using tiny cube speakers, the others are right, it's WAF. A tiny speaker will never be able to reproduce the mid-range of a full size speaker.

a big room, requires big speakers. It's physics.

Bose cubes and their types, do a very very godd job in small apartments and such (take away bose cost factor for a minute), but what happens is people here a Bose demo in a small showroom and take it home and put it in a room 4 x the size of the store.

they then wonder why it sounds like crap.

<img src="http://carbonlord.com/Audi/Painted_4.jpg">

Im torn between small sat like speakers or doing something interesting with a few C/L/R's

<img src="http://www.definitivetech.com/images/product%20images/clr_group.jpg">

I'm trying to scope out my first HT set-up.

-df

stand-mounters (with or without sub) or even smaller floorstanders.
With standmounters you may not need a sub if you situated them from the right distance from the back wall (your speakers will tell you when you are at the right distance). Unless of course you like the room to shake during movie explosions.