People with hearing loss often struggle to watch TV and understand what they hear.
“The natural response is to turn up the volume,” says George Dennis, whose father has hearing loss, “but with modern TVs, that actually makes it harder to hear because the words get even more distorted.”
While a person with hearing loss still struggles to correctly hear the TV, others in the household and neighbors may complain it’s too loud. Traditional hearing aids don’t solve this problem.
That’s why Dennis set out to create an affordable “hearing aid” for his father to use while watching TV. Over 20 years ago, he founded TV•Ears®, an easy-to-use wireless headset that is classified as assistive listening devices for hearing-impaired individuals.
“The secret to the headset is I took a hearing aid circuit and put it in the headset,” he says, noting it’s a doctor-approved solution. “Designed to amplify hard-to-hear speech frequencies, it amplifies and clarifies words so they’re easy to hear, even accents and whispers.”
Here’s how it works: the user wears the headset while watching TV. The TV audio can be on or even muted. If muted, others in the room won’t hear the TV. The device comes with a transmitter/charger and a stethoscope-style headset. The battery is designed to last four to eight hours.
Finding relief and a solution for his father resulted in a product that’s now helped over 2 million people. Dennis uses them too: “I wear TV•Ears® all the time.”