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Comment by socalgal2 | Hacker News Reader

Conspriacy theory ... TVs have bad sound so you're compelled to by a soundbar for $$$

I've certainly had the experience of hard to hear dialog but I think (could be wrong) that that's only really happened with listening through the TV speakers. Since I live in an apartment, 99% of the time I'm listening with headphones and haven't noticed that issue in a long time.

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I don't think the bad sound is necessarily deliberate, its more of a casualty of TV's becoming so very thin there's not enough room for a decent cavity inside.

I had a 720p Sony Bravia from around 2006 and it was chunky. It had nice large drivers and a big resonance chamber, it absolutely did not need a sound bar and was very capable of filling a room on its own.

Soundbars are usually a marginal improvement and the main selling point is the compact size, IMO. I would only get a soundbar if I was really constrained on space.

Engineering tradeoffs--when you make speakers smaller, you have to sacrifice something else. This applies to both soundbars and the built-in speakers.

I assume that TVs have bad sound because better speakers just don't fit into their form factor.

Nah, it's just smaller space that's available. Big CRT had space for half decent one, superflat panel doesn't.

Like all conspiracy theories, this seems rooted in a severe lack of education. How exactly do you expect a thin tiny strip to produce any sort of good sound? It's basic physics. It's impossible for a modern tv to produce good sound in any capacity.

It's easier to believe in conspiracy than do a few minutes of research to discover that you need a good quality sound system to have good quality sound.

My Mac is pretty thin. It provides pretty good sound. My older LCD TVs (before my current one) all provided good sound. So no, I don't need to have a server lack of education. All I need is my actual experience to know that it's not impossible for a thin TV to have reasonable sound.

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