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Comment by sfn42 | Hacker News Reader

I am floored that people really expect integrated TV speakers to be good.

Couldn't they be miles better if we allowed screens to be thicker than a few millimeters?

I believe one could do some fun stuff with waveguides and beam steering behind the screen if we had 2 inch thick screens. Unfortunately decent audio is harder to market and showcase in a bestbuy than a "vivid" screen.

Anyone who cares about audio will have dedicated speakers, so it barely even makes sense to make TV speakers good.

I'm a bit on the fence about this.

If someone buys a TV (y'know, a device that's supposed to reproduce sound and moving pictures), it should at least be decent at both. But if people want a high-end 5.1/7.1/whatever.1 sound then by all means they should be able to upgrade.

My mum? She doesn't want or need that, nor does she realistically have the space to have a high-end home-cinema entertainment setup (much less a dedicated room for it).

It's just a TV in her living room surrounded by cat toys and some furniture.

So, if she buys a nearly €1000 TV (she called it a "stupid star trek TV") it should at least be decent—although at that price tag you'd reasonably expect more than just decent—at everything it's meant to do of the box. She shouldn't need to constantly adjust sound volume or settings, or spend another thousand on equipment and refurbishment to access to decent sound.

In contrast, they say the old TV that's now at nan's house has much better sound (even if the screen is smaller) and are thinking of swapping the TVs since nan moved back in with my mum.

Good speakers isn't really compatible with flatness of modern tv's. You can certainly make one with good speakers, but it would look weird mounted on the wall. Buying external speakers seems like a decent tradeoff for that.

Sure, it would be nice if TVs could have good sound out of the box if that meant no other tradeoffs. But if it means making the TV thicker (and, as other comments have pointed out, it probably would) then I'd be against it, since I never use the built-in TV speaker and frankly don't think anyone should.

Honestly I think high-end TVs should just not include speakers at all, similar to how high-end speakers don't contain built-in amplifiers. Then you could spend the money saved on whatever speakers you want.

> She shouldn't need to constantly adjust sound volume or settings, or spend another thousand on equipment and refurbishment to access to decent sound.

How about €100 on a soundbar?

Nope. That's a misconception. Due to space constraints I don't have dedicated speakers for our living room TV. And I don't think I'm the only one.

And I do own two proper dedicated speakers + amps setups. I also know how to use REW and Sigma Studio. So I guess I qualify regarding "cares".

Sadly I lack time to build a third set of cabinets to the constraints of our living room.

A sound bar, even though fairly bad, is still a million times better than internal speakers, and you'd need a very exotic setup to be unable to fit one.

I'm surprised given you care about audio that you can even tolerate internal speakers. I'd just not use that TV and watch wherever you have better audio.

Everyone cares about hearing the words. Those who care about hearing nuanced and buy extra sound equipment are a distinct and much much much smaller set of viewers. Yet only tha smaller set seems to be able to get decent results.

I don’t expect them to be “good” but I expect to be able to make out the basics.

Your expectations are too high, a 30mm thick screen will never produce good audio.

Various sections of my screen (LG C series) are significantly thicker than 30mm.

Also - this isn’t a speaker problem this is a content problem. I watched the princess bride last week on the TV, and didn’t require captions, but I’m watching Pluribus on Netflix and I’m finding it borderline impossible to keep up without them.

The content is mixed with decent audio systems in mind.

When you listen to that content on a good system you don't have these issues.

Nolan films are a perfect example.

Imagine if we said “hey your audio is only usable on iPhone if you use this specific adapter and high end earphones”. Somehow the music industry has managed to figure out a way to get stuff to sound good on high end hardware, and passable on even the shittiest speakers and earbuds imaginable, but asking Hollywood blockbusters to make the dialog literally audible on the most popular device format is too much?

In a lot of bass music the most important parts are simply inaudible on an iPhone speaker.

Why do you think high end audio equipment exists?

You can still watch these movies, its just sounds bad on low quality sound systems.

> Pluribus on Netflix

on AppleTV/TV+

Apologies, “Netflix” has become like hoover, Google, or Kleenex - eponymous for the product.

Thats definitely an American way of speaking.

Americans don't call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover, do they? The British definitely do.

I don't think so, but I typically hear them use brands like Kleenex, Band-aid, etc instead of tissue, bandage.

Im a bit confused why you’re surprised to see American terminology on a site with a predominantly American user base, or why it’s worth commenting on.

That said, I’m Irish and live in the UK. You’ve never heard people say “I’ll hoover that”, or “you can google that”? Kleenex and band aid are definitely American ones but given the audience I thought it was apt

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