Wireless Headphones

Any recommendations out there for a set of Wireless Headphones and are there any which will allow the TV sound to be off while feeding sound to the Headphones? Does that make sense? May be a silly question but I'm asking because I don't know. Thanks

That will depend very much on your TV and what it is capable of. Some TV's support Bluetooth, so you can use Bluetooth directly with those and turn the internal speakers off.

Some have a 240v transmitter with a jack plug, does your tv have a jackplug for headphones, Some TV`s cut the sound to the speakers automatically whilst others dont.

OR you can go for RF headphones (which requires a sender unit) that can be connected via the optical connection or if you still have a tv with phono connections sometimes these still output audio when muted.

Thank you both. I know my TV does not have Bluetooth

Does it have a 3.5mm audio out socket?

If you have a firestick and watch through that, you can Bluetooth to it.

freddiemercurystwin said:

Does it have a 3.5mm audio out socket?

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Yes

You can get bluetooth adaptors that plug into the headphone socket, I have one.
It's crap, I have to keep re pairing the headphones to it.
That's why I suggest RF headphones as they are already paired to the sender.

You can't beat a cable going round the perimeter of the room imo, depends if you want to move around/change seats whilst watching the box.

Bluetooth can be quite poor for this sort of thing - they can have substantial latency if not using e.g. AptX codec.

Not a problem when used for music etc but for TV you get slight lip sync issues which will be extremely distracting.

garash said:

Yes

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If you plug a 3.5mm jack plug into the socket does the sound still come out of the speakers?

freddiemercurystwin said:

If you plug a 3.5mm jack plug into the socket does the sound still come out of the speakers?

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It used to be the thing that plugging in to the headphone jack would mute the speakers. That's a throwback to the days when TVs weren't as menu-driven.

What's more common you'll often find now is that the TV has menu options for how the headphone socket works, and this means it no longer mutes the speakers. There'll be a sub menu to set the volume level independently from what the speaker volume is set as. The catch is that this menu is often a bit buried, so it's not like you can grab the remote and tweak the volume level in the same quick was as you would the main volume.

Be prepared for things to be less that straightforward though.

In a simple world, the easy answer is to use the Optical out on the TV in to a headphone transmitter that either accepts Optical in, or via an Optical to stereo audio convertor. The Optical out would stay live and at a fixed level regardless of what happens with the TV speaker volume. The headphones would have their own volume control.

The reality is that all the additional menu options for TV speakers, headphone settings, HDMI control and possibly some other bits trying to get their oar in means that things don't always work in the way we'd think logical. For example, my TV is a Panasonic, and I can have it hooked up to my surround system via either HMDI ARC or Optical. I'm using Optical because I like to choose sometimes just to use the TV speakers, so I need a 'dumb' signal connection. However, I still want HDMI control for some automated switching such as bringing the TV out of standby when the Sky box powers on, and for changing input selections when the AV receiver is in standby. There are times when the TV thinks it has to mute the Optical output. Not everyone is using a Panasonic TV, or using it in the way I'm using mine, but the point remains that getting these things to work consistently might involve some workarounds.

My Sony mutes when a jack is plugged in.

freddiemercurystwin said:

My Sony mutes when a jack is plugged in.

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How old is your Sony and, if it has a comprehensive menu structure, are there options to change the behaviour?