Hello all, my dad is hard of hearing and uses headphones to listen while watching tv. MY question is, I know he can listen to Apple TV with his AirPods, but is there a way that he can listen with his AirPods (he uses noise canceling so he won’t hear the background noise) and the rest of the family use the tvs speakers to watch tv? We love to watch as a family, but it’s hard for him because he can’t hear dialogue.
What TV do you use, it may have this built in. Apart from that you have two options. Either an Audio splitter + BT dongle Or Connect the headphones to an AirPlay dongle, that way it becomes AirPlay instead of BT and can be shared natively via the ATV
I have used my soundbar and an AirPlay device at the same time. Dialog on the AirPlay device is sometimes not in sync but it works. I have not spent time figuring out if I adjust audio sync on ATV settings if I can get it closer as it wasn’t needed in my use case since th AirPlay was while in another room.
Assuming the tv has optical out, you could buy an optical splitter and an external Bluetooth transmitter. One goes to the soundbar and the other to the Bluetooth transmitter. Then any Bluetooth headphones would work.
This is what I do, works great.
This works I’ve done this for a grandfather from audio out split to a soundbar and also a steinheiser wireless headphone setup uses RF not Bluetooth less lag. It comes with its own charging base and volume wheel on the base worked great as he could even take his hearing aids out and use it
That’s exactly what I had to do for my father. Only solution that allows the sounds out of the tv at the same time.
Iphone has a ‘live listen’ feature that acts like a hearing aid. Pair the headphones w his iphone, turn on live listen, and pit the phone next to the speakers.
Not quite what you’re looking for, but LG TVs have a feature called “enjoy TV sound together” for this exact purpose. You can output to multiple audio sources.
If the soundbar supports AirPlay, you could try casting the audio via AirPlay to several devices simultaneously - to the soundbar and to the headphones. It works with AppleTV and multiple AirPods for sure, as I’ve used it before.
It’s a somewhat stupid idea since you’re sending audio data to the soundbar (which is connected by a cable to the TV) via wireless radio (so the cable is essentially useless), but it should work.