Well, I've tried the "poor man" version, seems reasonably good, but never invested in a "proper" surround system (even though they're now very cheap!).
Stereo is a funny thing, it's only "ideal" in one particular place, and there's all sorts of "acoustical funnies", speaker quirks, room reflections, etc. Sometimes I plug in my amazing LS3/5s, for occasional tv stereo, and the "stereo image" is superb, no matter where you are. That "shouldn't" be possible, and I've no idea why it works. Was this brilliantly good design, or just a "happy accident"?
Dolby in cinemas depends very much on the Haas effect, which requires specially lining up up the equipment per auditorium, etc. How well this works in living rooms, I've no idea. But, I'd have thought, in a smaller space, phase information should also work quite well, and that's what the "cheap and cheerful" version does. After all, it's in widespread use, those tiny one-box speaker systems which give "very wide" stereo work in exactly the same way, by feeding an anti-phase signal to the opposite side.