I've been watching all "TV" on my Dell PC monitor for over 5 years. I have not turned on my regular TV since.
Both for "over the air" channels and Sling TV.
Only hardware I bought was a Hauppage internal TV tuner card; about 80 dollars at the time. And a 35 dollar Mohu brand antenna that is tacked to the wall about 8 feet from the PC. I use the antenna and Hauppage to pick up maybe 50 over the air channels whose broadcast antennas are about 25 miles away. Sling is streamed over my Internet connection. All told, probably 300 channels. This was originally a way of "cutting the cord" and getting rid of Cable TV.
The connection from PC to monitor is via HDMI.
Until about 3 months ago, I had a Dell S2316H monitor with built in speakers. I don't game and don't have high requirements for PC audio, so that worked very well. But the monitor got to about 10 years old and one of the 2 speakers blew out. I could have just bought external speakers at that point, but I decided it was time to replace the monitor as well.
So I replaced it with a Dell SE2726HS monitor. No speakers. 110 bucks on sale at Best Buy. And I bought a pair of Creative Labs Pebble V3 USB speakers. 34 bucks at Amazon. Each speaker is round, slightly bigger than a grapefruit.
This all works quite well. Viewing distance is arm's length. If anything, the new 27 inch monitor might be an inch or 2 too wide, but I don't regret it.
All of this stuff connects to a PC I built last January. MSI Pro Z890-A board, which has Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI outputs. I am using the HDMI to the new monitor.
I will warn anyone who attempts to use any sort of software equalizer to adjust bass and treble on external speakers that they will likely end up highly frustrated. I tried several different equalizers and gave up after probably 50 hours of struggling. I played with dozens of settings in Device Manager, Windows sound control panel, Windows task scheduler, etc. With as much AI assistance as I could tolerate from Google.
Windows 11 Pro, the equalizer, and the speakers were all competing to be the boss, interfering with each other. I'd "solve" the situation for an hour or a day only to find that my configuration would not survive. I'd end up with no sound at all. Sometimes it failed on the very next reboot, but I had one config that was fine for a week or so and then failed. I pulled out my remaining hair and gave up.
Equalizer apps I tried and ultimately failed with: FxSound, PEACE EQ, and I think at least one more that I cannot recall.
So, I live without equalization or any type of tone control. The unaltered sound on the Pebble speakers is certainly far superior to the sound I had from the built-in speakers on my old monitor.
Apparently...if you demand tone control on external speakers, you are best advised to buy a standalone device like this:
I may or may not eventually do that.
Or you might be willing to spend more on speakers than I did. I have no idea how well speakers with "built in" rotary tone controls would work. I'd be suspicious.
