Prompted by one of my daughters, I asked her mother for a list of 79th. (shush!) birthday presents.
After a moments thought, she came back with a request for a cable free headphone set for TV. Our viewing tastes differ so she can't join me. I use a gifted Bose pair which work well using Blue Tooth from my LG TV. Sadly our lounge Panasonic TV (TX-L37E5B) does not offer Blue tooth and my understanding is that radio adapters introduce lip sync issues. Curry's have an LG43UR8i006LG for £300 which seems modest although good speaker sound out from such a slim TV is unlikely.
Any printable thoughts?
The requirement has arisen because I turned down the lounge thermostat and then had to purchase one of those *wrap around* electric blankets which conflicts with her phones cable!
A lot of soundbars etc have a delay in processing, and many TVs have a lip synch delay adjust setting to advance/retard the audio output in relation to the video.
Therefore any BT delay may be compensatable for by wiggling the settings in the telly.
You can get Bluetooth adaptors that will accept a line in or headphone in analogue audio connection and present it as Bluetooth. Slightly more faff than having it built in though since they will probably need power (many can be powered from a USB port, which many TVs have)
Indeed, I have yet to heat any that are better than "just about ok"
I frequently use my headphones (Sony CH-700) paired directly with the TV (LG OLED). Generally I don't have any sound synchronisation issues with them. The TV does have a sound synch adjustment control that allows you to tweak the sound to lag or lead the picture if required.
The CH-700 would be overkill for a solitary user in a quiet house with no use for Alexa etc.
Something is being purchased by others so we will see how that performs. The Panasonic is ancient but junking a working TV will have my distant Samuels ancestors turning in their graves!
Wireless. Charging via proximity (cradle charging). Claims no pairing. Analog input.
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Yet the article here, describes what it is doing.
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Bluetooth LE: LE Audio via Bluetooth Low Energy AUDIO LE latency (~40ms) is much lower than traditional Bluetooth latency (SBC ~170-270ms) - ensuring audio/video sync for seamless viewing. LC3 (Low Complexity Communication Codec) is the new high quality audio codec that transmits high quality audio signals with very low latency, ensuring that high quality Sennheiser audio stays in sync with your TV
And so far, 40msec is the best latency I've seen in the adverts.
You don't see old Radio Shack FM transmitters any more.
Apparently there was a Bluetooth AptX that had a low latency characteristic, but it was replaced by Qualcomm (I think Qualcomm may have bought out the AptX people?).
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"All of the current Bluetooth audio codecs, whether that’s
default SBC Qualcomm’s aptX Sony’s LDAC
transmit data over Bluetooth Classic.
LE Audio will first be supported in version 5.2 of the Bluetooth Core Specification.
LE Audio introduces an all-new Bluetooth audio codec called LC3
LC3 scales 345kbps, right down to 160kbps.
SBC 345kbps, to 240kbps—ut (it takes a substantial hit to audio quality)
aptX Adaptive 420kbps, to 279 [This is presumably different than "original AptX"]
Sony LDAC 990kbps. to 330 "
And one thing to note, is computer "Bluetooth Stacks" don't support anything but SBC. The chances of LC3 being available on a Windows PC by default, would be about zero, since Windows (as near as I could determine), runs BT4 and BT5 devices in BT Classic mode all the time. This has nothing to do with whether these headphones work -- I'm just noting that you cannot extrapolate from what your PC does, to how other stuff works, because the PC is so far behind.
I am very nervous about BT claims. I don't know why that is. My crappy BT speakers, maybe ?
The 500 range would probably be a better match specs wise. I don't use any of the smart capabilities on mine - but chose those because they are quite good for people with big heads / ears ! :-) The sound quality is also pretty decent IMHO.
You could always go the add on bluetooth option so long as it has a way of getting an analogue line or headphone out (or even digital co-ax / SPDIF etc)
Recent ish TVs will usually have some compensation built in for this, and also often have controls to allow you to add up to a couple of hundred ms lead or lag to the audio.
On my 2016 LG, it is in the audio settings:
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You can turn on the adjustment and then drag the slider left or right. You can also have different settings for different output devices. (in my photo it has defaulted to the internal speaker since that is what it was using at the time - but it could equally be an external device or the ARC return channel etc)
I am slowly moving my Tv's towards being HDMI monitors with something like Raspberry Pis as set top boxes to drive them with anything on the net as well as TV signals....
That's how my stuff is set up, streaming from a QNAP NAS, everything else via individual boxes, TV is just used as a monitor. Yamaha-RX-S601D for switching and Amp, probably better options around now.
I have supplied, for a relative, a Sennheiser headphone set that connects the headphone jack of the TV to a infrared receiver worn around the neck. No latency, charger stand, many hours of operation per charge, battery pack lasts for years, stereo (and can be set to mono). The receiver has a hole for a 3,5 mm jack, so any headphones fit, also an "induction coil" which some hearing aids pick up. That couples the sound into the hearing aid directly vie the "telephone" setting.
Works very well: both the transmission thing, and the coupling.
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