Re: Unshielded speakers near TV (powered off)
Steve's right that unshielded speakers won't affect an LCD set. But it seems the underlying assumption of your question is that unshielded speakers somehow damage televisions. They don't. The magnets in the speakers can bend the electron beams in direct-view CRTs*, like TVs and old-fashioned computer monitors, and therefore mess up the screen images. The magnets don't do anything to the electronic components or produce any kind of permanent damage. They don't even affect CRT rear-projection sets, because the guns are buried too deep in the sets for the feeble magnetism of the speakers to reach them.
(I'm not sure if the magnets might affect plasma sets, which use charged gases to produce an image.)
BTW, to answer a question you
didn't ask:
1) A cieling-mounted speaker would be too far from the set to affect even a direct-view CRT. The problem with those came from center-channel speakers sitting directly on top of them, or big, honking tower speakers sitting inches away from them on either side.
2) For home theater purposes, ceiling-mounted speakers are really not a good idea. (The only application I would use them in is a public address system. Look at it this way - have you ever been in an actual theater that used ceiling-mounted speakers? Have you ever been in a supermarket that didn't?
) Ideally the dialogue should come from as close to the screen position as possible, not from several feet above it, so that everyone sounds like the voice of God and everytime the sound and picture pan right or left you have this odd change of direction. (Not to mention that it is very difficult to timbre-match the typical in-cieling speaker to your front and left speakers - which destroys what should be an unbroken sound stage.)
Regards,
Joe
