Using television screens as loudspeakers

ALTHOUGH PICTURETVTV quality has improved greatly with the development of flat-screen televisions (see ), sound has taken a dive. The problem is that s with slimmed-down screens have insufficient room for decent speakers to be fitted to them, either at the back or in the frame. Such televisions are therefore usually connected to an external sound system, such as a sound bar or a home-cinema system, to improve their audio quality.The loudspeakers of early televisions were as big as the screen, but engineers have got good at making speakers smaller and squeezing them into tighter spaces. A conventional speaker produces sound waves using an electromagnet to vibrate a cone-shaped diaphragm, but there are other ways to generate sound, including employing an actuator to vibrate a flexible panel. That raises the question, why not vibrate the screen itself? And this is exactly what a couple of television-makers are now doing.