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#3 is completely unnecessary and actually damaging to the surround field with the advent of 5.1 sound. The best surround field in a standard room is achieved by placing monopolar (standard direct firing speakers) bookshelf speakers on opposing side walls facing each other, 10 degrees behind the listening position, and raised 6 to 8 feet off the ground. Dipolar/Bipolar/Tripolars were used back when ProLogic was the only surround format because these speakers created a more "stereo" sounding surround field with the mono-surround field Prologic format. They do so by bouncing the sound all over the room before it reaches your ear.
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A standard room is a perfectly square box with 8 foot ceilings. Not very many people's rooms are exact or "standard". All of that changes in the real world. Again, the math can only take you so far, you need to focus more on the implementation.
Dipolar speakers were created to sit inline with the listening postion where they create a null space (the speakers are out of phase). This was done to create a more open, enveloping surround field that is not localized to one side or the other. In some ways this may defeat the purpose of discreet channels, but it certainly was not intended to create a "stereo" surround field. Less localization, not more.