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How To Connect a TV Listener To Your TV

The following tutorial will demonstrate how to connect a wide range of hard of hearing TV listeners to your TV set. Video Transcript For The Hard Of Hearing: This video is designed to try and help people when connecting a variety of different television listeners from the range we feature here at HearingDirect. We get questions an awful lot really with regards to how to connect up the TV listener to the television. In principle, a TV listener is designed to connect in a multitude of different ways depending on the type of television. But irrespective of how the base units, and this is an example of a base unit that a headset would sit in, and most base units have a variety of connection options and once this base unit, or one like it is connected to your television, it will broadcast wirelessly to a pair of headphones that you can use at a distance from the television. So TV listeners, that’s how they work, they connect to the television audio out options and then broadcast the sound to a pair of wireless headphones and then those headphones can be adjusted both in terms of volume and balance and tone to suit the individual listener and normally without affecting the volumes for others that are watching the TV. I say “normally” because that does depends on how you connect it to your particular television and that’s part of what I’m preparing to talk about today. So if we look at the number of different connection options that exist for connecting to your television, we can see pretty comprehensive examples of them all here. If we just take this cable to start with, this is very typical of most cables that are provided to connect the television base unit like this to a TV listener. One end of the cable you have, a 3.5 male jack, and that is what connects into the back of your TV listener, and in this case that goes in those socket here. The other end is designed to then connect to your television. Certainly, older models of television will have what’s called audio out options and you often see them as red, white, and often with a yellow cable, as well. The yellow cable is the video so in the case of the audio TV listeners we don’t need a video output so you’ll just have the left and right or the red and white audio out. If your television has connections like this, very often it will have two, what looked like exact copies of each other, sometimes located in different parts of the television, they will either be located on the back of the television, the front of the television underneath the screen, or on the side of the television. What you’re looking for in your model is the audio out options. If you have two sets as I’ve said located in different parts of the television casing, you’ll tend to find that one will be audio in such as if you want to connect to a video camera or another device to show something on the television, and therefore you need the audio and video content from the device to be supplied directly to the television, or in this case you want to take a sound, an output out of the television so you need an audio out connection. So it would be best is to consult your TV User Guide to find out where your audio out connection options are located for your particular television but, typically, the ones on the rear of the television are normally audio in and the ones on the side or the front are audio out. But, really, it is worth checking your own user guide to determine for yourself which are the audio out options. Once you found them, you’ll then find either a red and white as I’ve said, and possibly a yellow including these connecting to the red and white ports. If you don’t have those or even if you do but, but in addition you have a spare SCART socket in your television, then this adapter which is supplied with most TV listeners can be used and you plug it in, in this fashion, and then you can use this connection to go in your SCART socket in the back of the television. Nearly all SCART sockets are multi-use, as in, they can be either an output or an input, but again, you should check your TV User Guide to check which of your SCART sockets are outputs versus input. If you don’t have a SCART socket or a red and white audio out option, you can use an adaptor like this, which again, is normally supplied with most TV listeners and this will enable you to plug the TV base unit to broadcast to your wireless headphones into a headphone socket on your television. Almost all televisions have a headphone socket. Do bear in mind, however, if you choose to connect using this option, often, that will result in the sound being cut from the television speakers, and that is, really, because normally most people would either want to use headphones or the speakers to listen to their television. That’s fine if you’re not watching television with a group of you or more than one person then if you’re with a group or more than one person obviously you might want to have television speakers set to the normal volume that they want to use and you want to customize your volume. Using this option to connect in that case may well cut the sound from the speakers so, again, you’ll be able to find that out from your particular Television User Guide and in some instances that is an optional choice so you can change the settings on your TV headphone socket on your television you can choose as to whether, in doing so, will result in the speakers being deactivated or left active. Those are the main connections for the television listeners. There is one final connection that a very limited range of TV listeners have and this is using the digital optical cable, and actually very modern televisions, most modern televisions only have a very limited number of audio out options and the most popular of which is the digital optical audio in and out and that’s what this cable is designed to do. This particular model of TV listener, its base unit, as you can see, has a cable socket here that these are designed to fit into. And then the other end will be connected to the digital optical out of your television. There aren’t that many TV listeners that have this option, this is the Geemarc CL-7150 (product no longer available - try Geemarc CL7350) that does have this option and at the moment that is the only TV listener but by that statement we are talking about the alternative now see, there are ways or potential for more manufacturers to start to release TV listeners that will connect by the digital optical in or out. There are other options on most modern televisions such as HDMI, or indeed, a USB but those will not connect to this stage, directly to any TV listener base and so the digital optical audio in and out is the most likely at this stage. There are some occasions where you can actually convert the digital signal to an analog signal. So you can take the digital optical out and convert that to an analog signal. The reason you need an analog signal is that this base unit, the connection options, and the headphones are in the analog, as they only require stereo output. This is designed and digital optical out is being designed to actually split the sound in more than just the two channels of left and right or stereo to enable the modern world of surround sound and 5 channels or more and that’s why most modern televisions only have that digital optical out but it’s unnecessary for just a stereo output, which is why all modern television still come with a stereo headphone output but the reason you choose this connection over this one would be, if this is an option on your television and your TV listener, then it’s better than this one because it won’t affect the TV volume of the speakers. It’s quite a complicated subject but, hopefully, that’s given you some clues to how to connect up your TV listeners and obviously a little bit of advice as to how or which model to choose, we do have a great team of people here at HearingDirect who can also provide more detailed advise and you can contact them anytime during the working week, 9 till 5, on 0-800-032-1301 or alternatively outside those hours, please do e-mail us at customerservices@HearingDirect.com
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