Most of the time if it is a movie or show I really want to hear, I'll kick on the surround sound system. If it's a no-brainer type action movie, I just run with that. If it is something that has a lot of dialog, I will switch to a speaker hooked to the 'center' channel right up close to where I'm sitting. Seems that most of the spoken words come from the center channel. Have a speaker set up just for that. My hearing aids has a unit to pair with TV, but I rarely use it. I like the 'feel' of the sound as it hits the walls of the living room.
I have a hard time hearing our old flat screen that I put in our bedroom, the voices sound like they are mumbling half the time. But our newer flat screen in the livingroom I don't find a problem with. The sound and voices are much clearer. Since the flat screens have the speakers coming from behind the screen instead of in front like the older TV's I think this is part of the problem. I did buy a front speaker for our older flatscreen but it's hanging on the wall in our livingroom and since we don't watch that much TV I don't when one of us will feel like moving that speaker to the bedroom.
We have a television; but we seldom watch it. I have been thinking that there is no sense in paying for that expensive satellite when we never even use it. We can hear it fine when it is on, because the speakers (wherever they are ?) seem to work fine. Robin got us a little connector that attaches to the television, and it makes it a bluetooth connection; so that you can then sync your headphones with the television. This would make it easier for someone to hear the TV, plus it does not create any noise in the room, so if one person is watching a loud movie, and the other person is quietly reading a book, then the book-reader is not disturbed by the noise. I think that she hooked it up; but since we have not been using the television, Bobby has not tried syncing his headphones to so how it works. Okay, I was wrong about that part. I just asked Bobby, and he says that he has it but it is not hooked up. But, at any rate, my point in the whole post was that this kind of a gadget could help when someone was watching television and could not hear it very well. You would not have to sync it with headphones, you could sync it with bluetooth speakers (set where you could hear them), and then use the speakers for the television.
Of course, now with this "whistling" in my one ear, it is somewhat harder to hear tv at times, but I do ok. There are some shows we watched, like Timeless, where is was very hard for both of us to understand what the actors were saying. Had to put the show on Reverse and re-listen to what was said. Anyway, there is absolutely no way my wife could go without tv.........and I'm serious! She loves HGTV, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, but part of the time we watch MASH instead of Wheel and Jeopardy. NFL, PGA and NASCAR are definitely tv seasons, but generally just record NASCAR and FF to crashes. Even though she loves those shows, she also likes "noise" in the apartment. She did grow up differently than me, in the fact that she had two sisters and a brother around her. Sort of like constant noise in the house. Not me. I was an "only child". Got to watch my favorite Westerns and other shows, mostly when I got out of the Navy. But, at home, the tv really belonged to my step-parents. I can't actually remember one time, while living with them, that I even turned the tv on. Now, as I've stated in other Threads, when I go over to see my cousins for the weekend.............that was "Party Time" and tv!
There are times when I put captions on even though the movie is in English, just because I don't want to keep adjusting the volume.