"David Rance" wrote ...

Sacha wrote:

I was both heartened and disheartened this morning when Ray read a piece
out of the DT to me. Apparently, it is officially acknowledged (not just
us moaning to each other!) that while they look great and the vision's
wonderful, flat-screen tvs produce really terrible sound. A lot of people
have resorted to buying a soundbar to improve the clarity. I'm relieved
it's not just us, to be honest. Watching Call The Midwife the other
night, we lost several seconds of dialogue because of the blasted music
and the blurred dialogue. So it's not just the deaf and ageing! Eh?

A week ago my ten-year-old set stopped working and so I had to buy a new
one. I had done a lot of homework on what the strengths and weaknesses of
the modern sets were and I was particularly worried by what I'd read about
the poor sound quality. I don't hear sibilants too well and when I guess
what has been said it can get quite hilarious as well as frustrating -
fortunately my wife is often there to "translate" for me. I was of the
generation that indulged in hi-fi back in the '60s (in fact I ran,
part-time, a semi-professional sound recording company back in the '60s and
70s) and, with my old set, I could plug it in to my current hi-fi system to
improve the sound, but one program (University Challenge) I found always
had distorted sound, presumably because it was recorded with poor sound
equipment in the first place.

Well, I wasn't *quite* ready to go out and buy a new set but was now in a
position where I had to. After doing a lot more research I finally decided
on a Samsung Smart TV. I thought that, if the sound is poor, I can still
plug it into the hi-fi. When it arrived, imagine my disappointment when I
found it wasn't possible to do that. Yes, there was a sound output but it
was digital and my hi-fi is too old to accept that!

However, all's well that ends well because the sound from the new Samsung
is superb and I don't need a separate set of speakers. It's even better
than my old Sony CRT set. The picture's pretty good, too, especially in HD.


If you use a set top box for HD, something like my Freesat Humax 1TB
recorder, they have normal sound outputs on them.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK