No way to get TV dialogue out of surround speakers

Yes, this is standard for Sonos, but I don’t have your same feelings about it.  I don’t have any issues with hearing dialog (from audio channels to be more specific) from the soundbar, and don’t really want to hear them from behind me generally speaking.  However, some people like stream stereo music from their TV and have it come through on the rear as well as front speakers.   I think it would be a good feature to to have the system automatically play stereo in the rear channels when the source is stereo (or mono).  This option is available for streaming sources already.

I wouldn’t say I’m that  upset about it or consider the rear channels to be paper weights. More and more sources are using the surround channels, even ‘talky’ content, and I never really cared for sound profile/simulations, although stereo audio from rear channels is a bit different.

You could set the TV output to stereo.

”Money-grubbing” or “incompetence” is a matter of opinion. I’ll suggest another: simplicity. SONOS tends to shy away from presenting the user with a blizzard of user options that many users will consider confusing.

This sort of option is available on some traditional 3rd party A/V systems, but usually buried in a long, inconvenient drill down of options. 
 

Surely the point of surround effects speakers is to produce the surround sounds? Speech (unless an off-camera voice) is normally played through front speakers, with the actors on-screen. It doesn’t seem to make sense to have voices coming from behind the viewer when the actors are in front.  

The definition of surrounds is not dialog coming from the rear, unless the dialog is spoken by someone off screen behind you or to the sides.  The OP is thinking of something different, like 5 speaker stereo or the like.  What that is depends on the DSP applied to the input, but it’s not surround sound, and Sonos is a surround sound setup.  

Riiiiight, bc it's the natural order of the universe that when you're watching TV, dialogue--no matter where the speaker is--has to come from the front, and music (you know, the biological soundtrack of life)--and wind rustling, stage coach sounds, etc--only come from behind, no matter where that action is. 🤣

And what to make of the barely audible but still distracting scratchy sounds you get out of your surround speakers when you're just watching news, a talk show, or sitcom? Where does that map to the ineluctable order of things? 

The simple fact is, a lot of people buy extra speakers to hear better the things they need to hear. Like dialogue.

And Sonos' settings are already plenty complicated, with adjustments and enhancements for this and that.

So I return to my point: If Sonos insistently filters dialogue out of surround speakers, it is making either a bad engineering decision, or a cynical capitalistic one.

Hopefully, if enough people complain instead of kiss their asses, they'll provide that functionality. 

See, there's more proof you have no clue what surround sound is.  Sonos doesn’t "insistently filter dialogue out of surround speakers", because the dialog isn't there to filter out.  No sound engineer routes screen dialog to the surrounds, they'd be laughed out of the studio. 

Please, study up on surround sound.  You are embarrassing yourself.

You're missing the point: It's not about surround. It's about getting the functionally out of the speakers you need for different uses, bc people watch different content on TV. Here, you have to go through a set up process to make the speakers surround, in which case they're worse than useless unless you're watching a movie, and a remove surround features process to use them as regular or stereo speakers, in which case you lose the surround perks. Are you, with a straight face, going to tell me there isn't an engineering way around that? 

No, it's about surround sound.  

With a 3rd party remote you could probably bring out the TVs stereo output option to a single button.

That Sonos is geared towards surround, not dialogue is not a secret. If the feature to play dialogue from rear speakers is important to you, you should check beforehand if the speakers can do this. Especially if you have special needs due to hearing constraints.

By the way: I’ve owned multiple surround systems an none of them where able to play dialogue out of the “wrong” speakers.