Does your dad watch TV at a volume that’s too loud for everyone else? Does he rely on captions to follow the dialogue? These can be early indicators of hearing loss.
About half of those aged between 60 and 70 have hearing loss, and this increases to 70% of those aged 70 and over, and 80% of those aged 80 and over. The consequences of untreated hearing loss include social withdrawal and isolation, increased risk of falls and depression, and poor quality of life. Hearing aids help to compensate for hearing loss and mitigate some of its impacts.
Even with the best hearing aids, factors like distance, reverberation, and background noise can still make it hard to understand speech. Take watching TV, for example – in a small, quiet, carpeted room with no competing noise, it should be relatively easy for a hearing aid user to follow the dialogue on a TV show. However, most home environments don’t look like this. There will often be multiple people watching the show, sometimes with kitchen appliances running in the background, and maybe some hard surfaces in the room.
This is where TV streamers for hearing aids really help. TV streamers deliver high-quality stereo sound directly to a person’s hearing aids – it’s like wearing wireless headphones. With a solution like this, dads with hearing loss can enjoy the TV with clarity and ease while keeping the TV volume in the room at a normal level.
For the month of September, we are offering a complimentary TV streamer with the purchase of any pair of compatible Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids. We have paired four TV streamers with compatible hearing aids for your information:
1. Oticon TV Adapter 3.0
Valued at: $295.00
Transmitting range: 15m
The Oticon TV Adapter 3.0 is compatible with More, Opn S, Opn, Siya and Xceed model hearing aids. Oticon uses brain research to guide developments in sound processing with an emphasis on reducing listening effort. Oticon’s latest model, More, boasts a Deep Neural Network (DNN) that has been trained with over 12 million sound scene recordings. This information guides the way the hearing aid automatically adapts to different environments. We like More for its natural sound quality, ease of use and durability.
2. Phonak TV Connector
Valued at: $285.00
Transmitting range: 15m
The Phonak TV Connector is compatible with the Phonak Paradise and Marvel ranges of hearing aids. We like the Audéo Paradise RT because of its industry-leading binaural beamforming microphone technology and its compatibility with almost all smartphones. The RT model also offers a telecoil feature and excellent battery life off the charger in a discreet, stylish-looking device.
3. Resound Unite TV Streamer 2
Valued at: $385.00
Transmitting range: 7m
The Resound Unite TV Streamer 2 is compatible with all wireless Resound hearing aids. We like the Resound ONE for the way it uses cutting-edge microphone technology to focus on speech, while maintaining all-round sound awareness to preserve important binaural hearing cues and natural sound quality. The Resound ONE rechargeable receiver-in-canal model is robust, user friendly and has excellent battery life off the charger.
4. Signia StreamLine TV
Valued at: $315.00
Transmitting range: 10m
The Signia StreamLine TV is compatible with wireless AX, Active and Nx series hearing aids. If you saw the comments above about the Phonak Audéo Paradise, we like the Pure Charge & Go T AX range for most of the same reasons. Most people don’t think about a telecoil until they really need one, and the telecoil version of the Pure AX is only marginally larger than the non-telecoil version. Plus it has longer battery life. What’s more, we think Signia hearing aids are among, if not, the best available for tinnitus treatment.