[Nyororin]

TV speakers in general are horrible. I have yet to see a television with decent speakers built in. Add that in to the sad fact that most of the programming is monoaural, and it sounds horrible.

We`re not big television watchers to begin with (the tv gets about 8 hours of watching time a week), but still removed the speakers from our television (they were removable from the sides of the LCD panel) and run the audio through a proper sound system to decent speakers.

I also don`t understand the "have the tv on all the time" thing either, but it seems to be about the same in Japan as it was in the US. People who have the tv on all the time have it on ALL the time. I know tons of people both in the US and Japan for who being awake = television on. When I was small, my family was like this as were the families of all my friends. It`s the same with my husband`s family.

Even though I was raised with that being the norm, I still don`t like it. We record all the programming we want to watch on the HDD recorder and then watch it when we want to watch - usually while eating dinner. I`ve had people tell me that we should never watch tv while eating dinner, but as it is never on any other time watching it while eating a meal certainly doesn`t cut into any "family" time.

It also fills me with some sort of strange internal joy when my son is perfectly happy playing and not interested in the television at all - while other kids whine about not having it on.