Now in her '80’s, my wife has become hard of hearing. She has recently acquired hearing aids, but finds them unsatisfactory when watching movies/dramas on the tv, and much prefers to listen using wired headphones. I still prefer the sound produced through our Yamaha amplifier and Bose speakers. However, modern TVs, for some unaccountable reason, appear to make it impossible to have the sound sourced simultaneously from both headphones and a Hi-Fi system. There must be many households where one of the residents is hearing impaired, while other members of the family aren’t.
We have a modern LG OLED 55" smart tv, coupled via an HDMI Arc cable to a Yamaha receiver which drives the speakers. I have contacted both LG and Yamaha, and they both confirm that it is not possible for the sound to emanate simultaneously from both headphones and an auxiliary speaker system. It has to be one or the other, despite the myriad output ports at the rear of the set. At least the LG has a setting “wired headphones + internal speakers”, but the point is the sound is not particularly good from the TV. I’d be interested to hear if other CHOICE members are experiencing a similar problem, and whether there is a possible solution. Perhaps CHOICE as a consumer advocate might take the matter up with TV manufacturers to help the hearing impaired? It couldn’t be very difficult to build a modern TV whereby the sound output can be split between wired/wireless headphones and a stereo system, and would surely be a positive selling point.
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