Every TV Should Sound This Great [Oped]

TVs all look decent enough at the moment. Truly, picture quality is such a straightforward target that manufacturers have moved on to compete with widgets and 3D. Screw that. I’d want to remind everyone that TVs need better sound.

We got hands-on (and eyes-on and ears-on) time today with Bose’s first ever TV, the VideoWave, which puts sound quality at the vanguard of priorities. The TV itself has a tight but not astounding picture, but that’s not what Bose was targeting. Bose claims the VideoWave’s sonic guts are the outcome of 10 years of study, and the sophistication of what they’ve managed with so little space lends some credence to this claim. In place of setting speakers around you, each of the VideoWave’s audio comes from behind the screen itself. Six compact woofers produced thick, rumbling bass notes-enough to shake our room. But the true dazzler of the VideoWave is Bose’s PhaseGuide technology, a vented tube it is ready to aim a beam of sound around a room wherever needed. A Bose rep available was ready to demonstrate the effect with a laser-mounted PhaseGuide-and likely he enough, where he pointed, so followed the sound, as if a speaker were attached right there. (Yamaha has similar tech in its soundbars , based off sonar principles.)

But the item is, for TVs picture quality comes first and the Bose wasn’t terrific. Despite having great sound, I’m unsure I’d recommend a Bose over a Sony, Panasonic or Samsung. But that doesn’t mean sound isn’t important. With all picture qualities approaching ” adequate” it’s time to refocus on sound.

It’s more important than ever. TVs were racing to be thinner and occasional end frequencies have suffered greatly. And although far thicker than your average LCD set, the VideoWave remains to be svelte enough to wall mount, and packs a speaker array that fooled our entire theater into thinking we were surrounded by audio equipment. We’d make this trade off any time.

The question is whether simplicity (and that’s ingenius simplicity) is definitely worth the whopping $5349 price ticket for a 46-inch set. The VideoWave sounds fantastic, but so could any home theater with a budget of over five grand.

But today, questions of price are almost irrelevant-the VideoWave sends a message as powerful as its bass to other manufacturers from this point forward. Built-in speakers have always been an afterthought. Today, Bose drove a stake into this notion, delivering audio quality that the likes of Samsung and Sony would drool over being associated with for your lounge. 3D imagery has yet to prove it’ll be around in five years-but audio is forever. If companies really need to start out transforming our home viewing experiences without the usage of gimmicks, as of today they have to stop following James Cameron and start following Bose.

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This post is tagged: little space, priorities, simplicity, sophistication, sound quality, speaker array