Senate votes to turn down volume on TV commercials - Yahoo! News
It's about time. Even though it looks like it will take two years before enforcement.
Ever since I plugged my TVs output through really efficient speakers, this problem of startling volume changes when commercials interrupt a show is exacerbated. I wanna stick an ice pick in the tv station programmer's ears until they bleed...
The mute button is always the first to wear out at our house.
Yep. The TV industry is taking advantage of the human hearing condition, but this should level the playing field quite a bit. But the solution would be to throttle back the ads themselves.
When I am driving the freeway, I can barely hear the music on my car radio, but I can clearly hear the ads. Now if I turn the music up to actually hear it, I get blasted out of my seat from the commercial ad. So, I don't listen to the radio.
But I don't see why some brilliant EE guy can't develop some FFT programs that can detect a commercial. especially with all that compression and limiting, and there would be not need for another law. But alas, I think that is easier said than done.
There have been attempts to do that. And to mute or skip the ads. Don't know how well they ever worked.
I had a Panasonic S-VHS recorder that initially did a great job of squelching/skipping ads, but over time the ads from major advertisers such as Ford, Kellogg or similar became immune.
Large 'dresser' motorcycles have radios that auto increase volume based on ambient noise, so seems like it would be an easy thing to program a TV/whatever to self sense an ad's signal increase. Still, it shouldn't have to be necessary.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks