Opinions wanted on wireless headphones for watching TV.

[usually_quiet]

My mother is experiencing some age-related hearing loss and is thinking of getting wireless headphones for watching television. I found little truly useful information searching on my own, so I decided to ask for opinions here. If there is some light-weight wireless headset that you really like to use for TV, what is it?

Also, I saw an adapter somewhere for using a TV’s stereo jacks with a regular headphone (so other family members could still hear the TV.) Does anyone here know if they work well?

While looking for headphones, I found two products, TV Ears and Bell+Howel TV Listener, that seem interesting because they connect to the stereo jacks rather than the headphone jack. The TV Listener also uses IR transmission so that cordless telephones and fluorescent lights don’t interfere with the signal. I found a only few reviews, a real mix of positive and negative, with neither favorable or unfavorable clearly winning. Has anyone here used these products? If so, what do you think?

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

[jagabo]

http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-3524643-6635148?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keyw...ess+headphones

http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/S-452zI5S8W5X/learningcenter/home/headphones.html

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-7QWt9OvD0UK/cgi-bin/prodsearch.asp?sp=lnav&search=wireless+headphones

[usually_quiet]

Thanks for the links, jagabo, but this isn't the kind of information that I need help finding. I know about shopping websites already and have looked at the information on lots of headphones, but didn't find many useful user comments.

What I want to know and can't find out much about about is ...
Are they comfortable?
Are they good for watching tv or are they really better for listening to music?
That sort of thing.

[Nelson37]

Have had two different sets, no remarkable difference. Source not important, you may need a headphone jack adapter or some such.

Most significant factor is personal comfort, and the only way to tell this will be to take your mother to the store, and actually put the headphones on her head. Make sure and have her move her head around, if possible sit down and stand up.

IMO extremely important to have a volume control actually on the headphone, make sure she can manipulate this.

[Hooded1]

Just a couple of things that occurred to me when reading this thread:

I don't think one set of headphones will necessarily be better for listening to music than TV sound, or vice-versa. I have one good set of Koss headphones that I use all the time, both for music or watching TV/movies, etc. Sound quality is sound quality.

I wouldn't be sold on one product because it plugs into the RCA stereo output jacks of your TV instead of a normal 1/4" or 1/8" headphone jack. The adapter to convert to/from any of those jack types, if not included with the headphones you buy, can be purchased at your local Radio Shack for under $5.

[slacker]

usually_quiet,

Some sites with credible answers to audio headphone questions are...

www.headphone.com
www.head-case.org
www.head-fi.org

There are others...

Mark

[slacker]

BTW,

To cut down on your research time, take a look at the Sennheiser rs140 headphone @ www.sennheiserusa.com. These are not "cracker jack" specials. These are audiophile quality. They come highly rated. Sony has a couple of models out there as well.

[usually_quiet]

Thanks for all your help folks. After asking me to post a question here, doing hours of research, and printing out pages of info, Mom has decided headphones are too much trouble to use. (Sigh!)

She didn’t understand that wireless headphones still required a physical connection to the TV, or that using the headphone jack meant that Dad had to wear headphones too in order to hear the TV. Also, when I looked at their TV, it had no RCA out connections, which meant that they would have to use the ones on their VCR, which is overly complicated for them. Too bad, really. This would have made a good Christmas gift.

I was thinking that my sister and I could pool our money and get a nice DVD player instead, so they could rent a movie now and then (VHS being so hard to find at this point) or watch something that I recorded on my DVD recorder. Now my challenge will be to find one that they can understand and use after I hook it up. My parents aren’t stupid people, and are still pretty sharp for their age, but adapting to new technology is difficult for them.

[Hooded1]

A couple of thoughts....

(1) Using the VCR's RCA outputs would really not be anymore complicated for your parents. You can hook everything up for them, and the only thing that they'd have to get used to would be tuning to the station they want to watch using the VCR's tuner instead of the TV (i.e., just using the VCR remote control to change channels instad of the TV remote control.)

(2) It would be very easy to set it up so that you can have sound both on the TV speakers and through the headphones. If your TV is connected to the VCR via a simple coax cable connection (which it must be, if the TV doesn't have RCA in- and outputs), then connecting your wireless headphones to the RCA outputs on the VCR will not divert the audio signal from being passed to the TV speakers via the coax cable. You would automatically get the audio signal being sent from your RCA L/R outputs on the VCR to your headphones, and the TV would get the audio signal through the coaxial cable. So your mom can listen on the headphones, while the TV speakers would be working as well!

[TooLFooL]

um, yeah, that would be overly-complicated for my folks too....!

[SingSing]

Did her doctor mentioned hearing aid yet ?

[usually_quiet]

Thanks for the advice, Hooded1. Unfortunately, I explained all of this to them before my last post. They don't want to have to watch TV using their VCR as the tuner -- that is the "overly complicated " part in their minds. Also, they record several shows each week while they watch something else, so it wouldn't be a great solution in any case.

Their TV is an older one that has has RCA-in, and a headpone jack but not RCA-out. Dad mentioned replacing it (he has his eye on a widescreen), but Mom vetoed that solution. (She is the household "accountant".)

Mom doesn't feel her hearing is so bad that a hearing aid is necessary, and based on the experiences of some acquaintances, she feels a hearing aid would not be helpful enough to justify the cost. She says she just has trouble distinguishing voices at lower sound volumes. Dad hears a little better, but is still OK listening at her volume. She just wants her children and grandchildren to be more comfortable, and to be able to watch TV without disturbing Dad when he is reading or taking a nap.