Television Tech

Television Tech

In a previous post, I complained about the difficulty of turning closed captions on and off on my television. This was primarily so that I could watch a basketball game without captions covering the hoop. It led me to think that maybe I could find a TV that had closed captions on/off on the remote control. And a friend suggested that soundbars offer TV speech enhancement. So I set out to get a new and better system.

I have room for a 32 inch TV and 26 inches for a sound bar. (Not that I need or want anything bigger.) This shuts me out of high end TVs.

A few TVs have "CC" on the remote. Smart TVs abound - these have internal handling of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. I use, on a rotating basis, Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, and Hulu. Many smart TVs have voice control, for which I have little use.

Soundbars replace a TV's speakers with a bar shaped package that sits in front of or below the TV. They have a several speakers, built in amplification, sound processing, and multiple interfaces to TVs. Not being limited to the thin packaging of modern TVs, and with signal processing, they can put out better sound than a typical TV.

I would have liked to get a soundbar to use on my old TV before getting a new TV. But you need a compatible audio interface - optical or HDMI-ARC (ARC is audio return channel). These isolate the audio signal and send it to the soundbar. HDMI-ARC is newer and has the bandwidth needed for seven channel audio. Only five channels for optical. Two channels is enough for me.

So a Samsung 1080p smart TV and Sonos Ray seemed like they would get the job done. After some work, the Sonos is doing pretty good. Default, it has boomy bass that ruins the sound. I set the bass way down and the treble way up. Then the sound was okay. I had to look online to figure out how to make the soundbar volume adjustable from the TV remote, but it was easy. Then I found speech enhancement. A huge improvement. And it works well with neutral tone controls.

Then I was looking through the Sonos phone app (required to set up the soundbar) and wanted to figure out how do turn speech enhancement on and off. It was not there. I did an exhaustive search of the menus. Finally a web search. You must have the TV turned on and sending sound. Then you just look in System and choose your device and the option appears. Sigh. Couldn't they have put a note in the app explaining that little detail.

On to the TV. Very small captions. And "enlarge" didn't do anything. Very confusing controls and very small text. The "smart" channels included Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Peacock, but NOT Paramount+. I couldn't see any way to download an app for Paramount+. I put my Roku stick into HDMI 1. Works well but I have to use two remotes. I was hoping to get it down to one.

Anyway, the captions are useless and I will return the TV tomorrow. Insignia makes a dumb (i.e. not "smart") TV with a remote that looks useful (has a CC button). 720p resolution. Two remotes required, but that's my current situation. I should get easy caption on/off and enhanced sound. Maybe not enough to justify the price of the Sonos Ray.

The Next Day

Best Buy makes it very easy to return things. I returned the Samsung and got the Insignia in 15 minutes.

YES! The Insignia dumb TV is great. Reasonable captions with easy caption on/off. Easy to configure. Easy to set up with the soundbar. The picture is as good as my old TV.

Of course basketball season is about over. This year's UK team is wildly inconsistent - not good for doing well in tournaments. Likely won't need the CC button for nine months.

Lessons Learned

Getting a smart TV means giving up useful buttons on the remote. If that's okay, make sure that the smart TV has all of the streaming services that you want. Otherwise you will have to add an external device anyway.

If you want a high quality, high resolution TV, it will likely be smart. And you will likely get a stupid remote control with it. Perhaps voice control will make up for the stupid remote. But I find voice control to be annoying.

You can't win.

I wonder if there is some accessibility option that helps people who have lost their voice use voice control. Maybe a lip reading TV or a TV that understands sign language.

Tomorrow

Oh no - boxes, packing material, old hardware scattered about my living room. Cleanup day.

 A Tip for Streaming Services (2023-03-16)

I just signed up for Netflix. The menu showed three options - 720p with ads ($6.99), 1080p ($15.99), and 4k ($19.99). My TV is 720p, so there's no point in paying for any higher resolution. But I'm willing to pay to avoid ads. Ah - a button at the bottom - show all options. This displayed the above three options plus one more. 720p without ads - $9.99. I'll take it. The higher resolution options allow watching on multiple devices simultaneously, but I have no use for that feature.

I have also purchased episodes of shows on Amazon Prime Video. If you look carefully you can find (at least in some cases) 720p versions for a significantly lower price than 4k or 1080p versions.