That’s a problem that might pop up more often for couples with a young child, bonus point if they live in a small apartment where the TV is inevitably too close to the bedroom: After a long day, you still want to enjoy a good movie with your partner but the soundbar has a shared wall with the kid’s bedroom, and if using one pair of headphones is straightforward, it is surprisingly not easy to use two on the same device despite our human technology being capable to send men on the moon for 6 decades.
Bluetooth is a terrible technology but we’re stuck with it now and here are the solutions I found to make it work with or without it.
Bluetooth emitter/receiver
!! with 2 channels. Full disclosure, I haven’t exactly tested that solution but I own a single channel one and use it all the time in planes. It works like a charm and it’s cheap. I picked the AirFly from Amazon I know one of my work colleague uses and recommended to me.
That’s probably the most straightforward solution especially if it’s a recurrent need and has the benefit to work for every device. The big caveat as you’re reading this: you might want to watch a movie now and not wait for the amazon delivery so here are the other solutions I found:
Roku app
if you are a Roku user you are in luck, the (awesome) app allows anyone on the same network to connect to the device and use the headphones plugged or connected to your phone. You don’t even need a Roku account and connect as a guest. That’s the solution I use the most and I recommend since it works perfectly.
Once connected to your Roku device, click on the headset icon and you’re good to go.
… and that’s about it for the bluetooth solutions.
Unfortunately, and as far as I know, only Roku is able to pull that trick through the app. I’ve tried with the NVIDIA Shield app with no success and couldn’t find a solution for other devices (FireTV, Apple TV) either.
The rest are wired solutions, and won’t work with earbuds but a lot of bluetooth headphones would come with a wired option as well, such as Bose QC35 II or Sony WH-1000XM4 only to mention the most popular ones.
Playstation and XBox
We sometimes forget those consoles are very capable streaming devices as well. For both, you can plug your wired headphones to up to 4 controllers.
Headphone splitter
I always have one for traveling, it works well for ipad or computer but would much more complex for your tv setup unless your have very long audio cables.
Hopefully I was able to save your TV night!