The sound quality from the built-in speakers on most televisions nowadays is
really pretty hopeless and to compensate for this many people have bought
themselves either a sound bar or like myself they've got a full surround system.
But what do you do if one person in a house has significantly worse hearing
than the other person? That's the situation that's affecting my parents at the moment,
and I hope with this, that I've found a solution.
Now in the past I had bought my parents a sound bar hoping that this would help in some way.
But after a couple of weeks they stopped using it, because like most sound bars
it was geared up for people who have normal hearing, who just want to hear louder explosions,
and a richer bassier sound, but it didn't really do anything
to make it easier to hear the person reading the news.
Also let's say it's the person sitting here that has difficulty hearing the television.
But the person sitting here has perfectly good hearing.
Turning the volume up loud enough so that this person can hear it
Makes it too loud for this person
Another problem with the sound from a television
Whether you're listening to it through the built-in speakers
a sound bar or even a surround sound system, the main dialogue
comes from where the screen is, all the way over there. Now the person I'm
speaking about has no difficulty hearing me when I'm talking to them on the phone
right up to their ear ,but across the room they would struggle a little bit more.
So this particular product does a couple of things. Rather than just making the audio louder,
although it is capable of that, it also has a dialogue enhancer
to make the speech clearer and most importantly rather leaving the audio
over the other side of the room, you bring this speaker with you
and you put the audio where you're sitting.
So let's get it out of the box and have a good look
I first became aware of this product when I was on the Sony Japan Website.
It came up as one of those associated things to the thing I was looking at
I was actually looking at tape recorders and it said
if you're interested in this, that you might also be interested in this.
that's because they aim tape recorders at the elderly market over in Japan
and this falls into that category.
I thought wouldn't it be good if they sold that in the UK,
So I had a look, and they did. It's just they don't publicize it very well.
These pictures on the side of the box show the
intended demographic for this product most of the people using it have gray hair.
This chap watching his program about kayaks or is a canoe?
Someone will probably tell me.
Grandma are sitting here watching this programme and dogs and cats.
I can recognize those two, using her Sony speaker while everyone else is listening
to the TV speakers from the couch
and then this one, well no one's got gray hair here, this chap just wants to listen to the football while he's doing the dishes.
The standout features are. With this speaker you can clearly hear the voice.
It's got stable wireless connectivity, easy charging and it will
work with any TV as long as that TV has a headphone or optical output.
Okay let's go through what's inside the box . Now I bought mine from Amazon in the UK but
this is the same package you get throughout Europe because we've got a
number of different languages in the instruction booklet here we've got a
euro plug and a UK plug power adapter effectively a five volt USB charger
which connects up to a USB A to Micro B lead.
Then we've got an optical lead
which is the ideal way you connect it up to your television
but failing that you could always use the 3.5mm mini-jack lead
Right so here's what the speaker looks like when it's on it's charging base
and looking at the rear of it it seems like there's quite a lot of stuff going on
but it isn't that complicated you don't tend to have to mess around with any of this
I'll just separate it into its two halves =
and then have a look at the base to start with. So the pairing and reset button,
I haven't had to use those it's all. In the middle that's where your power goes in
and then on the right you can put your inputs from your 3.5mm mini-jack
and your digital optical output from your TV goes into
there you can use them both and switch between them but most people would
probably just plug one thing into either of those two sockets.
Okay now moving to the rear of the speaker let's go through the things on here. Ignoring the rather
obvious reset button on the left hand side behind the cover on the right hand side
we've got a 3.5mm mini-jack headphone output as well as a
power input for a USB micro lead which will charge the device while it's away
from its base and then we've got those other controls in the middle. We'll talk
about Voice Zoom and Auto Volume. Voice Zoom brings the voice out from the
background it makes it clearer and it seems to be old as a default
and you can switch off if you want but the effect isn't unpleasant, it just
makes things clearer so I've left it switched on on mine. But one thing I
haven't used is automatic volume control this is for if you've got an environment
that's noisy then you switch this on to two different levels of strength and
depending upon what it hears it will boost the sound to rise above it.
Finally that remote setting button that's for setting the device up to work
as a universal remote control with your television. Now the codes are listed here
seem just to be for TVs they don't include any set-top boxes so it's of
limited use to me because I use a satellite receiver when watching
television but my parents who watch everything through the built-in Freeview
on their TV it'll work fine for them. Those infrared commands are transmitted
from this dark window which runs along the rear of the device and of course that's
pointing towards the television while the speaker is pointed towards you.
On the bottom of both the base unit and the speaker you've got rubber feet at either end
which stop them from moving around and when it comes to charging it up
it's a very simple matter of just putting one thing on top of the other.
If you can use a cordless kettle then you can charge one of these up.
Now as far as connecting it up to your TV goes if possible you want to use the optical
lead for the best quality of sound. That's what I've used here and then you
might need to go into the menus on your television to make sure that it's
outputting sound both over the TV's built-in speaker as well as that digital
optical output and switching it on is just a simple matter of popping up the volume control.
and whilst you can use it when it's on the base unit
ideally you're going to take it over to where you're sitting and use it from there so
that's what I'm going to do here but I'm also going to turn the TV's built-in speakers
up to maximum so you can hear the difference between those
and this small Sony speaker
TV AUDIO
Now there was one thing I was concerned about with this scenario. If grandma's
listening to her Sony speaker and everyone else is listening to the
televisions built-in speakers and there's any slight delay transmitting
that audio across to the Sony speaker then there's going to be a weird echoing effect.
Well I needn't have been concerned because as far as I can
determine, there's no noticeable delay whatsoever.
TV AUDIO
Now you could just use this as a way of getting
sound to a set of headphones you don't have to have the TV speaker or the
speaker on this unit activated, and the speaker on the front has got stereo
drivers in there and that headphone output is a stereo mini jack as well
In fact looking at the specs here at the top left you can see the power output
it varies depending upon whether using it through the AC adapter or off the battery
and by the way that battery lasts for 16 hours approximately on one charge
and if you're wondering about the transmission standard it's at the top right, it uses 2.4Ghz
Now while the audio that comes out of this is
clearer and louder and more well rounded than using the TV's built-in speakers
I would still say that it's not the kind of thing you'd buy if you were looking
for a really bassy sound
Now while you don't have to use this as a universal remote control, I think if
you do have a compatible television it's definitely worth setting up. After all,
another remote control in a place where you can find it is always a useful thing
and this one works well it's nice and clearly laid out with well labelled buttons.
At the end of each day when you're going off to bed you can just put
the speaker back on it's charging station it does only take three hours to
fully charge to give you that 16 hours worth of continuous usage but you might
as well just leave it there overnight you know where to find it in the morning
I've got to say I'm incredibly impressed with this. The clarity of the sound that
comes out of here especially the dialog is second to none really and it's so
easy to use as well with its large on/off button, big volume control,
it's going to be perfect for my parents. I'll be going over there in a couple of weeks
so I won't be able to tell you exactly what they think about it until after then but
I'd say if you can't hear the audio that's coming out of here you've got no
hope of hearing it through anything else this is as clear as I've ever heard
spoken dialogue from a television. Now I've actually grown quite attached to this.
I've had it about a week or so now and I've been using it myself even
though it's not really designed I think for someone like me but late at night
when the missus is in bed and I'm watching a television rather than
disturb her by turning the volume up so I can hear the dialogue on all these
mumbly TV shows, I sound like an old person myself now, but I've been erm,
using this. It's perfect for that as well. I will say that if you walk away from the
TV with it just over to the other side of the room you'll start to get dropouts
on the audio you do really want to be line-of-sight even though it's using RF
you don't want to be taking it like in the garden or anything it wouldn't work
for that but I'm kind of almost considering getting one of these for
myself I've grown so attached to it so that's something. If you want to look
for one of these, well I'll put a link to the Sony website in the video
description text box because it's not immediately obvious on there.
They'll also be links in the text box to Amazon as well. It isn't cheap, it's a hundred
and fifty pounds but for someone like my parents
that this will make the difference between being able to hear the TV and
not hear the TV then that's money I think well spent
anyway that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching