About Speech Intelligibility In TV And Movie Listening
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An important aspect of TV and movie watching is how clearly you can hear and understand the dialog; this is called "speech intelligibility." Speech intelligibility is essentially determined by how well the TV or speakers can reproduce lower-treble sound. Sounds which determine the difference between "S" and "F", for example, occur between about 3kHz and 7kHz; this is often called the presence region. Your average television set has lousy fidelity in this region; in many cases turning it up louder causes more distortions and, therefore, speech intelligibility to worsen. This is where headphones can be so helpful--they give the listener very good fidelity in the lower-treble (across the board, really) and allow them to listen at a lower, safer volume. And, they let the other people in the room listen at a normal TV speaker volume.
Solitary TV Watching
For those who simply want to watch TV or movies alone without sound coming out the TV speakers, all you have to do is plug any pair of headphones with a 1/8" mini plug into the TV headphone jack. On most TVs this will automatically turn the TV speakers off; you'll be able to adjust the headphone volume with the volume for the TV set. The problem is most headphones don't have a cord long enough to reach your seat. This is easily solved by purchasing a headphone extension cord. You can find many in our accessories/cables page. You can also use wireless headphones instead, which many consider to the best headphones for watching movies and television.
TV Watching For The Hearing Impaired, Or When Viewers Want Their Sound At Different Volumes
Wireless headphones not only allow for tether-free watching, but also connect to the back of a TV and therefore allow sound to emit from the television as well as the headphones. Wireless headphones consist of a base station with a transmitter in it, and the headphone with a receiver in it. You can plug the base station audio into the headphone jack on your TV, but it will turn off the speakers. The best place to get audio for the base station is the "Audio Line-Out" connector on the back of the TV. In this case, the speakers will work on the TV and are controlled normally; the headphone listener will use the volume control on the headphones (some old televisions do not have rear panel audio connections and you must use the headphone jack on the front). If more than one person wants to wear headphones, extra wireless headphones can be purchased and used from the same base station (since most of the wireless headphones recharge their batteries while stored on the base station, only one headphone may be charged at a time).
Wireless Headphone Recommendations
Sennheiser makes a great line of wireless headphones; they all use the KLEER digital RF transmission system which provides excellent clarity, and each of them is a very good value in their own way. Using a battery powered base-station, the very simple Sennheiser RS 160 is a closed headphone and is great for a bedroom TV, or for kids in the back seat of a car with built in video screens. Movie fans will enjoy the clarity and isolation of the closed Sennheiser RS 170, which includes a surround and bass boost function. The open back Sennheiser RS180 is the best sounding wireless headphone we've heard, a real audio lovers headphone. Both the 170 and 180 use KLEER's long-range digital transmitter and will cover most people's entire home. The Sony MDR-DS6000 is a real film connoisseur's headphone; featuring digital wireless transmission that delivers noise-free CD quality listening; Dolby Digital™, Dolby® Pro Logic II, and DTS® 5.1 channel sound, as well as Digital Theater Systems surround sound processing; and, audio compression circuits for better speech intelligibility. Most importantly, the Sony MDR-DS6000 sound really great! Highly recommended.
