The Wireless Headphones Blog

How do wireless headphones for TV work? That was the first question I asked myself when I started shopping around for a set for myself. Actually, that’s not quite true – the FIRST question I asked myself was “Do wireless headphones for TV work”?

Thankfully, the answer to both is a resounding YES, and I’ll share it with you here in this post.

So how exactly do Wireless TV Headphones Work? Well, I’ll attempt to explain it without boring you with the nuts and bolts at this stage.

There are two components to a wireless TV headphone set.

Obviously, there is the headset, which has a built-in receiver and typically comes in four different styles (I’ll cover these more specifically in a post soon): Circumaural, supra-aural, earbud, and in-ear.

Circumaural are the traditional headphones that fit right around your ears.

Supra-aural are more streamlined, and just fit on your ears, rather than covering them entirely.

Earbuds, which are commonly associated with MP3 players such as Apple’s iPod, are placed directly outside of the ear canal, whereas in-ear (or canalphones) are placed directly in the ear cavity. Newsreaders and the Secret Service use these!

Now, the headphones work by receiving the signal which is sent from a base station which you will place on or near your TV, and the volume is controlled from either the base unit itself or from your headphone set.

The base station (sometimes referred to as a cradle) needs to be plugged into a nearby power supply, and also the audio output on your TV (or any other audio device you may want to listen to). The base unit will usually be the source of recharging your wireless headphones too.

Depending on the type of headphones you buy, and the available audio outputs on your TV set, the base unit will be connected to your TV’s headphone socket or RCA audio output.

With regards to battery life on headsets, most modern, good quality wireless headphones should work continuously for up to six or eight hours without needing recharged.

The base station performs its main function by sending an audio signal to your headphones, either through an infrared beam, or IR, (much like a TV remote control), or via a radio frequency wave (RF). Obviously wireless TV headphones that rely on the infrared beam as the means of transmission will have a limited range as they need to be able to “see” the base station. But you’ll be sitting in front of your TV to see the picture anyway, so that’s not really much of an issue.

However, a headset that transmits the signal through a radio frequency is much more flexible, and is generally able to send its signal through walls. Good wireless headphones from brands like Sennheiser typically have a range of over 300 feet! With RF wireless headphones you will probably find you will get far more use out of with them by also having the flexibility to plug them into different audio components. (i.e. I use mine with my TV, Hi Fi stereo and when gaming on my PC).

So that’s the very basics of wireless TV headphones. Soon we’ll look at more of the specifics.

P.S. I will mention at this point that the term wireless headphones is often applied to wireless TV headphones that use IR technology, and the term cordless headphones has typically been associated with RF headphones. To me, wireless headphones is the universal term that should be applied to both.