TV Volume control

Gentlemen,

This question is to save my sisters sanity, our mother is 91 in a few weeks and she is driving her attached neighbour slowly around the bend with her Tv volume and he is ringing my sister at least twice a day because of it, my sister and mum live in the same village, which is sixty miles from myself and my brother.

Mum has only been fitted with hearing aids in the last three months, mum wouldnt accept she was deaf otherwise she would have had them earlier, and the batteries are changed by my sister weekly.

My question is that hotel telly controllers are volume restricted is it possible to do the same to my mums controller.

Martin P

Hi Martin

I've noticed that our most recent two tellies have a 'hotel mode'. I'm not sure what this does, but perhaps volume limiting is one the functions available.

Neil

Hi

Most tv sets have a headphone socket. Can you persuade her to use headphones. They will mute the tv speakers.

Regards

Keith

Leeds UK

My thoughts are these:

Put the volume at an acceptable level then hide the TV remote or it chuck it in the bin whatever. For channel changing get a separate control box and set that at maximum volume as it won't make any difference to the television any way.

The only problem she/ you might have is she just might call in the television man and he will put you back to square one.

Failing that, have you tried her with head phones? You can get infra-red so she isn't tied to the set BUT you still have the problem of changing batteries I'm afraid.

Good luck with that mate.

Jesse.

Neil, I've just found on my new tv that it has a hotel mode so I've just talked to my sister to have a look.

Keith, Its taken over two years to get her to accept she is deaf and to use hearing aids, head phones will be mission impossible, particularly as mum has a very short term memory and might use them the first time and then forget why she has to use them thereafter, we are, I should say my sister is, having the problem with the hearing aids as she forgets why she needs them.

Jesse, fortunately the "repair man" is my brother, brother in law or me as everything is done through my sister, including financial matters that way we control everything she needs or wants, its safer that way.  

Talking to my sister we have come up with one idea and that involves sellotape over the speakers, this might sound cruel but for somebody approaching her 91st birthday her general health is good but the computer has a glitch which is getting worse.

Thank you gentlemen,

Martin P

Edited By martin perman on 24/01/2015 14:03:34

Edited By martin perman on 24/01/2015 14:04:34

Try one of these **LINK**

You put it next to the tv and a built in microphone sends sound directly to a hearing aid with the loop system

Then you don't have to have the tv volume up too high

Edited By Lofty76 on 24/01/2015 14:06:37

As someone who has to use two digital hearing aids due to industrial noise damage. In my case we set our TV at an acceptable level and adjusted hearing aids volume levels to suit . I.e. our TV has a volume range of 1 - 100 and was set at 60 to suit my needs it now operates at 20...Therefore a much happier household , the old lady of course will require help to set this up. The batteries should only need changed every two weeks

Bernard Reilly Glasgow

Martin....I feel for you and your mother and I can see myself drifting into this situation in the years to come especially since background music seems to take priority over the spoken word on most TV productions. On occasion this prompts me to use subtitles. I recently saw some amazing little portable wifi speakers, about 3inches in diameter which I thought would be ideal to place on the arm of my chair which might assist but how could they be activated by my Sony TV which is a few years old and definitely not a bluetooth or whatever? Is there some kind of intermediate device?

Mick

Martin I've just realised a problem and that is she would have to turn the tele off manually.

Jesse

As mentioned she won't want headphones but an old computer add on speaker amp set can be placed right up close to her chair.

Gentlemen,

Thanks for you inputs,

Mick, unfortunately mum has macular degeneration in both eyes which has been controlled by injections but she is slowly going blind and can only see white blobs when we've tried subtitles.

Bernard, the hospital set up the hearing aids with a computer so we cant play with them and they told us 7 -10 days battery life so we have opted for the seven days to be safe.

Mick, small speakers near her would be a good idea as when you plug headphones into my tele the tv speakers shut down.

One thing her two sons and son in law did was to cover the party wall with sound absorbant foam which does work up to a level.

Again thanks,

Martin P

My brother used to have the same problem with the old lady next door who was very deaf and always had the telly on full blast (they got on well apart from that!). She eventually had an induction loop system fitted and problem solved.

John

Martin

My commiserations. know what you mean... my mother in law is.. 97 this year...so your mum is just a youngster compared... also has age related Macular Disease (untreatable ), can still hear though, knackered knees, mumbles when she speaks, compos mentis only half the time, very demanding... but insists that there's nowt wrong with her.... ... it's my wife, brother in law, & to some extent me that's going loopy... ah well, it comes to us all in one form or another... eventually ... by the way she can still knit.... how the hell d' you work that one out.. ?.. well that's my whinge for the day..

Regards

George

I suppose I'm similar to lot of people on here, ie. getting old and therefore a bit deaf. It is a big problem. I find I can manage at a low volume until the background noise starts. Second problem is the transmission, Some films / plays need turning up and down all the time. I have no problem because my wife holds the doofer thing and it all set to her liking. It is aproblem and I have no answer, my mother was in her 90's and was convinced the noise was coming from next door.

Gentlemen, you have it lucky.

My dad used to rent out tellies in the 70s and 80s. One old lady was convinced Ted Heath was trying to climb out of the TV and assault her. She used to get the postman to put the telly in the bath, and ring up my dad when she decided she wanted to watch TV again.

He finally decided to retrieve the set. The lady's flat was an upper floor of a block and was serviced by an external walkway. He had to retreat backwards using teh TV to fend her off as she came after him with a handaxe...

Neil

Note that late-model TV's seem to be reducing the number/range of outputs available, other than HDMI. In particular my (approx 2 years old) TV only has a single audio output and that is optical. Because of hearing problems, I use headphones so that my wife can have the volume at a comfortable level and I had to dig around a bit to find headphones that could utilise the optical connection (they weren't cheap either). This would also apply to anything else (extension speakers?) that uses that output.

One thing I did find out a while back re. volume.. TV commercials volume is technically enhanced / increased by the advertisers tech dept. to be louder than any manual setting by the owner so as to be prominent in their selling process, try it, watch a programme at your normal volume then see how louder the commercials are, we have our TV set with 'auto volume balance' set & still have to reduce the commercial's volume somewhat when they come on.

George.

Not helped by the 1:2 ratio of advertising to content these days, which makes an hour and 20 minute film last three hours!

Neil

Gents, I offer a really simple solution and it appears to be totally ignored.

> Gents, I offer a really simple solution and it appears to be totally ignored.

I think the problem is she turns the volume up because she forgets to use her hearing aid. "I should say my sister is, having the problem with the hearing aids as she forgets why she needs them."

Neil