then go for it. Ive seen these "types" of speakers before, and they... um... are a waste of space. They do nothing for me. My bookshelves destroy them.
If you are ok with towers, by all means. Remember that a good looking pair of stands will cost a lot, roughly $100-200. You can find $50 etc, but they look like crap. Towers will give you better mid-bass response, at the very least.
For $200 there is absolutely nothing out there that will look good and sound good. Outside of a very, very lucky find on the used classifieds. Actually, most likely, they will be both ugly and terrible performers. I think of Polk entry level speakers.
If you are buying on looks, then get em. Personally, I think they are useless. Just use the tv speakers. Seriously.
I'm in the market for a set of 5.1 speakers, but my wife is somewhat feng shui-minded, and the speakers I choose need to be attractive and unobtrusive.
Bear in mind that I'm not an audiophile by any stretch, so even an "ok" set of speakers will sound good to me. My budget is somewhere around $400-500 for a complete set, or about $200 for just the front speakers (as long as I can at least get a nice set of mains, I can build off of that later).
The one complete set that looks good to me is the Yamaha NS-SP7800PN. Not only is that the look I'm going for with the front speakers, but the gloss black finish perfectly matches the bezel of my plasma TV.
Is there any other speaker set I should check out? Or like I said, possibly just a pair of good-looking fronts that I can start with?
I've considered getting a pair of small bookshelf speakers and putting them on a stand, but that sometimes looks dumb. Perhaps there's a good speaker/stand combination?