End of Deafening TV Adverts in the US

Have you tried switching your system to plain stereo and using decent headphones? If that makes things very much better, it would suggest your speakers and or room acoustics are contributing to the problem. The fashion for minimal furnishings and bare wood floors do nothing to help clarity. My choice for TV speakers would be BBC LS3/5a. An old design but still not bettered IMHO for general use where you don't need to rattle the windows. Perhaps with a sub if you listen to things with low bass.

Thank you for your thoughts. There are plenty of soft furnishings and a fitted carpet in the room, but I'm not sure how well my partner would take to the suggestion of listening though headphones, even as an experiment.

Colin Bignell

Subtle difference, the BMW and Volkswagen bits they use are not exclusively from the standard 10 grand mini eurobox parts bin.

B&O was often a case of a 50 quids worth of electronics parts in a 200 quid box with another 250 quid marketing overhead. I'd prefer 500 quids worth of proper engineering design even if it occasionally did come in a box you had to hide away :)

B&O remind me of Dynatron. Dynatron took some hideous old Lenco and Philips tat and put it in boxes that looked equally hideous but that appealed to a past generation of fogeys. B&O do the same sort of thing but make the boxes attractive to young fogeys.

Why do you think a TV design by Philips necessarily inferior? Just what is missing? Taking the mechanics of a decent TV and putting it in a better looking cabinet is very similar to what Rolls and Bentley do today.

However, I was referring to (some of) their Hi-Fi bits. Some of which - like say the parallel tracking turntable was unique to them - and quite advanced for its day. Also, as I said they made one of the best FM tuners of the day. Some of the speakers were quite good too.

Today, I dunno.

I can remember talking to the Chief Engineer at B&O UK about a particular tv set which was exibiting problems once Ceefax started. He said "Between you, me & the gatepost, that was a right abortion of a set!"

Could you name a maker where this wasn't so at some point in time?

Nothing wrong at all with Philips bits! It was just the 'deception' of a so called Danish design, when all the Danes essentially did was the pretty bits on the outside, they rarely tweaked the internals unlike the likes of Meridian who also took an entire Philips design for a CD player and reworked some major bits of it.

Do you know when B&O first produced a parallel tracker? They seemed to be quite common for a while but I can't recall when, theoretically better I always thought them a bit of a gimmick.