[Jeffhs]

My Insignia 32" flat screen TV has two speakers, mounted so that the sound is projected directly downward, not at the listener's ears. My hearing is very bad (brain injury at birth) and I am practically deaf in my right ear, so I have to turn up the volume very high just to hear much of anything. I got so fed up with this I finally bought a pair of wireless TV headphones, which solved the problem. No stereo (I said I am all but totally deaf in my right ear), but at least now I can turn up my TV volume as high as I need to without having to be concerned about disturbing my neighbors (I live on the first floor of a two-story apartment building).

BTW, flat-screen televisions in general have very poorly designed audio systems, since the speakers are usually mounted as they are in my set, just below the display to project the sound directly downward. Apparently I am not the only one having problems hearing these speakers, as I have seen pictures of wall-mounted flat screens in which larger speakers are mounted directly below the TV display and are connected to the set using the external speaker connection.

Why on earth are today's flat screen TVs designed with such poor audio systems? When I was growing up, my family had two console TVs (a 21" RCA, replaced a few years later by a 21" Crosley) with large speakers in the TV cabinet. The RCA set had the best audio, IMHO, as its speakers were mounted so that they could be heard well even at medium volume. The Crosley TV's speaker (just one, about 10" diameter) was mounted in the TV's cabinet, directly below the CRT, and sounded just as good that in the RCA console.

However, in the early 1960s, the Crosley TV was replaced by a 17" Sears b&w portable. The Sears set had passable sound, but nowhere near as good as either of its predecessors since the Silvertone set had a puny speaker mounted to the right of the CRT.

Modern TVs are no different as far as sound quality is concerned; flat screens with puny speakers, not unlike the ones in cheap transistor portable radios. (I've had a few of the latter as a teenager and can vouch for the bottom-feeder audio quality; however, then again most teenagers would not even notice the difference as long as they can hear the local AM (later FM) station just as loud as they can get it with the volume turned up sky-high.)

I guess today's flat screens are just built cheaply, and to heck with quality anymore. The best way around this is to connect a pair of decent stereo speakers to the TV, using the set's external (often marked headphone) jack, often located at the side of the set, or do what I did, connecting a pair of wireless headphones to the set's audio output jack.