There are so many reasons you’d want to listen to the TV with headphones; you don’t want to wake the kids or your spouse if you’re watching a movie late at night, you don’t want to be distracted by those same family members… maybe you have noisy neighbours who are loud talkers and just want to tune them out, or your significant other is out in the yard again with the hedge trimmer running. Not to mention that if you’re hard of hearing, you might need a little more direct sound.
If you’ve done any research into getting headphones connected to your TV you know it’s not simple. Most TVs have a headphone jack, but come on… no one wants to run a cable 10 feet from the flat screen to the sofa. And most headphones are Bluetooth, and not a lot of TVs have Bluetooth (though you could hack something together with a Bluetooth transmitter, but I digress).
Review: Sennheiser RS 175
The easiest way to get direct to your ears audio from your TV is with a pair of headphones dedicated to this purpose. Sennheiser RS 175 is a specialty pair of headphones that’s designed to work perfectly with your TV.
What’s in the Sennheiser RS175 box?
- Inside the package is:
- Headphones
- Rechargeable Batteries
- Base Station
- Audio cables; optical & analogue
- Power cable
Set up: Sennheiser RS175
To get these headphones set up you’ll need to connect the base station to your TV, receiver, cable box, sound bar or streaming device.
There’s two ways to connect the base station; with a digital optical audio cable if your devices are newer, or using the analogue 3.5mm jack. As I’m connecting to an older TV, I elected to use the Aux cable. It’s as simple as plugging it into the back of the base station, then connecting it to the TV.
Once connected there’s a small switch on the back you need to flip to choose which type of cable you’re using to connect. Then, turn the power on to the headphones.
In some set-ups, you may also need to change your audio output, either on the TV or receiver. These options are usually found in your device’s audio settings menu.
A word of advice here; depending on your set up, you might not be able to get audio from the TV’s built in speakers or sound bar if you’ve re-directed the sound to the headphones. Some configurations will only allow one output at a time, meaning if you want to go back to listening to the sound bar or your TVs internal speakers, you’ll need to pull the plug, so to speak.
I did this review for Best Buy Canada’s blog. Please support the work I do there by reading the rest of it on their site.
