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The Bluetooth protocol standardizes how wireless devices communicate with each other over short distances. He played an important role in the wireless revolution in consumer electronics, enabling everything from smartphones to video game controllers to headsets to no longer be tied to wired transmissions. In recent years, many manufacturers have begun to include Bluetooth features in their TVs. If you have an extension without built-in Bluetooth, you may be able to connect with a Bluetooth TV adapter.
How to Add Bluetooth Capability to Your TV?
Step 1 – Identify available outputs
The first step is to determine the type of outputs available for which you can connect a Bluetooth transmitter. The good news is that there are several types of outputs that will work. And the TCL 4K TV is a good example of one that has more than one output that you can use.
Here is a list of the different types of outputs that you can use depending on your TV:
- headphone jack
- Digital audio output / optical audio output
- Analog audio output
- Or any other 3.5mm audio output jack
Now you can have more than one option at your disposal. And if so, I will first use the headphone jack if it is available.
For example, on the back of the TCL 4K TV, you will notice (see photo on the right) that it has both an “audio output” with a small headphone icon (so you can connect your headphones directly to your TV) and an “optical” audio output at the bottom.
Step 2 – get the correct bluetooth transmitter
What may be confusing if you start looking at Amazon or elsewhere a Bluetooth transmitter is that some of the results you may find are only Bluetooth receivers. This means that the device only works to “receive” a signal and not to “transmit” or send one.
So just specify that the purpose is to allow this Bluetooth device to connect to your TV, then “transmit” or send the audio information to something like your Bluetooth headset, Bluetooth enabled sound bar or your Bluetooth enabled speaker system.
Be careful to avoid anything that is a “receiver only”
For example, the Bluetooth receiver is something you would NOT want to get because it simply acts as a receiver. It would therefore be impossible to send audio information from your TV to something like your headphones or soundbar. So, what are you using something like that for then ? This works great when you want to convert something like your car’s audio system so that it can accept or “receive” a Bluetooth connection or signal from your phone.