THE first “senior-friendly” LCD high-def set will be unveiled later this week with the kind of features only someone who went to Woodstock will love.
Manufactured by TV Ears, the set includes a built-in wireless headset which cuts down on volume-blasting; a remote control with just six buttons to lessen confusion and — perhaps most intriguing of all — a switch that turns the set off automatically after four hours.
“One of the biggest complaints we get from seniors is that they fall asleep at night and wake up at 6 a.m. and the TV is blaring,” says TV Ears founder/CEO George Dennis.
The set assumes that, if it hasn’t heard from you in four hours, you’re probably napping.
“Two hours [for the shutoff] is too short, and if you haven’t changed the channel or volume for four hours, it’s probably a good idea that the TV turns off,” Dennis says. “Either you left the house or are doing something else or you fell asleep.”
Dennis says the idea to create the “senior-friendly” set came from his 78-year-old-mother — and from comments he’s gotten in the last 10 years while producing TV Ears’ wireless headsets for the senior market (you’ve seen them advertised, a lot, on TV).
“We have a great pool of senior feedback and they’re al- ways complaining about their TVs,” he says.
“My mom, who’s my biggest focus group, says that when you get older it just becomes more difficult turning things on and off, changing the channel and seeing all the buttons.”
Dennis takes great pride in the TV set’s remote, which contains just six buttons (on-off, volume up and down, channel changer up and down and a mute button). It also has a slide-down panel that exposes a traditional numbered keypad, allowing the user to type in a preferred channel.
“Most people have two remotes with all sorts of buttons all over them that drives a lot of people crazy,” Dennis says. “This is one simple remote.”
He also says that TV Ears went with a 32-inch set for a reason.
“We thought about that a lot,” he says. “The average senior isn’t about bigger sound and a bigger set — they want to hear, see and use the TV and watch ‘Oprah‘ and the news and Jay Leno.”
While the $1,199 price tag might seem high for a high-def set, the cost includes “White Glove” specialty service.
That means the company delivers it, hooks it up, programs the remote and provides one-on-one instruction.
“There’s also a toll-free line that rings into our customer service department for tech support — one call and it’s all done,” Dennis says.
TV Ears will introduce the “Senior-Friendly TV” at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which runs tomorrow through Sunday.
The set will go on sale in March.