What is Digg?111 Comments
- Lord_oftheTrons, on 10/12/2007, -0/+70Those commercials drive me nuts at night when I have the sleep timer on and I'm watching Mythbusters or something like that. A commercial comes on at double volume and wakes me up. Need an Adblock for live TV.
- jo42, on 10/12/2007, -5/+49The solution is to BitTorrent your shows. That way you can watch them [brain damaging] commercial free and when you want.
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37"Head On - Apply directly to your forehead. Head On - Apply directly to your forehead." ... that ***** wakes me up every time.
- PoVRAZOR, on 10/12/2007, -13/+34His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson.
- AK10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21That commercial for the new Meatloaf CD that plays on DTV is incredibly loud, to the point where I am sure there was a mistake with the audio levels on the tape.
- rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -9/+27New Meatloaf CD... kill me now! :(
- pudiggy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Wasn't there a TV in the early 90's that did the same thing?
- Tainek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13seems like a good idea all round
you can tell why they do it, the marketing people think, "Hey!, if we make our commercial really loud, people are more likely to pay attention"
its all well and good until every single commercial does it, and thus you dont listen or pay attention to any of them -Mute- - verifex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12All I can say is YES YES YES, why the hell has it taken so long for this simple feature?
- meatmcguffin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11HELLO, IM BARRY SCOTT. BANG AND THE DIRT IS GONE!!!LOL!!!!11!!
- Ajajadude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I'd rather just have those companies that have the cranked up commercials put out of business, but this is good enough!
- schwack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Dugg for the idea, but my concern would lie in what happens when it supposed to be loud? (explosions in a movie, etc). If there were a way to use this technology to damp down the commercial audio, but keep a good balance in a movie, then its a great idea.
- foolonthehill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9zybch is right (although the capitalised words seem unnecessary). There are laws about the peak volume levels you're allowed, so to make themselves seem 'louder' the audio in adverts is massively compressed. This is nothing to do with data compression (e.g. MP3). The dynamic range (the distance between the loudest and quietest volume levels) is squashed into a very small range, then make-up gain is appplied so that all the audio ends up _just_ below the maximum level allowed.
- fofusion, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14In my experience adverts are louder than the programs.
I mean usually you have to grab the remote when the ads come on because it does get louder - I dont know if this is a network thing but it happens on most of the channels I watch. - yonnermark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This has seriously bugged me for a long long time.
I always hit the "half-mute" button when the ads come on. - myfanwy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10it's not generally a volume change, they're just compressed to *****, to make them stand-out (ie annoy us) more than the programmes.
it's the same as with modern, pete waterman/simon callow-sponsored pop music - no real dynamic variation (dynamic variation is a good thing, it's very effective for conveying emotion), just in-your-face sound - dongcha9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8finally! theres always an argument at my house when the loud Tv commercials come on....my brother tells me its too loud....my mom yells at me for watching tv too loud and says im going to go deaf....and I have to explain to them that its just a loud commercial! ***** Yea!
- rolfeman02, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Head on, apply directly to the forehead. Head on, apply directly to the forehead. Head on, apply directly to the forehead.
- jcaino, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9yes, and i'm pretty sure it was magnavox....
what ever happened?
they realized that they couldnt market it with load commercials and canned it. - coldphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@gwinerreniwg
Completely agree, and I even think there new commercials might even be worse than the original. - LanceHardenburg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Yes, I have it. It just normalizes volume.
- boberto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Honestly there were televisions advertising this feature 5+ years ago. Whether or not it was effective as this version, I'm unsure.
- lordfoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I personally can't wait for it. I hate the volume fluctuations between programs and commercials. Bring it on!
- airencracken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yup Magnavox smartsound. That rocked. My family still has that tv...
- inmatarian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Awesome.
Now if we can get them to black the screen during commercials, we'd be set. - GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I wonder how this will affect the sales of OXYCLEAN!!! WITH THE CLEANING POWER OF ORANGES!!!
- sizbo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Welll...if you're not TIVOing or torrenting or dailymotioning at this point, you're just subjecting yourself to needless hassle and torment.
the only commercials you should be watching are the ones that make it to youtube :D - RickyBennett, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5and the bad thing is they dont even say what that ***** is or dose i had to pick it up in the store just to see what the ***** ***** was
Head On - Apply directly to your forehead. Head On - Apply directly to your forehead. who the ***** cares - AK10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I have a Magnavox TV from 1992 and it still works perfectly. It even has that awesome S-Video input for your Super Nintendo! I must say, it has outlived at least three Sharp and Sony TVs in my household.
- JoCliMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Good, I'm getting tired of hearing "THE TV's TOO LOUD!" to which I have to reply "IT's A COMMERCIAL!"
- zodo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Something makes me think this is not new technology...Dolby (with their marketing brains) have decided to repackage simple dynamic range compression for a different market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression
I'm sure they've gone a step further and adjusted it so that it responds based on a a Fletcher-Munson curve, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher-munson_curve
EDIT: Gah! Beaten to it. - AK10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Magnavox TVs have had this for a long time.
- TravisL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My prayers have been answered!!! This is a real problem when you turn up the volume to hear the broadcasters voice during a football game, and then the commercials hit and you are blown out of the room.
- Sponky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4RTFA: Volume-leveling technology like this is nothing new—some television sets, DVD players, TiVos, and even digital music players have a similar technology built in...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3LIQUIIIID LEATHER! wish I could find that
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"My prayers have been answered!!! This is a real problem when you turn up the volume to hear the broadcasters voice during a football game, and then the commercials hit and you are blown out of the room."
If you're watching with a 5.1 audio setup, the ambient crowd and stadium noises are in the rear channels. Just turn down the volume a bit on the speakers behind you, then you'll be able to hear the announcers without worrying about being blasted when it's commercial time. - thegcinfo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Then you must suffer with the loud or get a TV with the Dolby invention. Really though if the remote gets lost is it really lost or did it just fall down into the couch or chair cushion and if your too lazy to put your hand down into the cushion to find the remote do you really expect us to believe that you are going to jump up and turn down the volume for every loud commercial that comes on TV?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Whats a VHS?
- vaduzl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3There is that guy with a beard selling Oxyclean , who has moved on to other gigs, with the angle. I YELL BECAUSE THATS MY ANGLE. I turn off the picture to fall asleep to WW2 and ancient history on expanded cable Discovery or History channels , and that one bastard ruins advertising to my half asleep brain. What better ad could be then talking to the semi conscious brain?
Im signing up for stay at home businesses and life insurance for babies , and I dont know why. Dont waste dollars, ad wizards. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2this is not a new product? oh, they stick a new label on it and market it to consumers. compressors/limiters have been around for a long, long time. Broadcast limiters exist in every station, they just get paid not to use them, so commercials stand out. the real solution? stop watching tv and just have your mommy tivo the good stuff on the science channel, then send you a vhs... like me!
- ThorHJ, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3About 34958340 people in this thread are going "this is nothing new," but Dolby wouldn't repackage plain old compression/limiting and give it a new name. Maybe this thing combines RMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_mean_square) and maybe an equal loudness curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour) plus some clever transparent way of keeping the volume steady, since it's tricky to avoid artifacts with a plain compressor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression). If they're truely sneaky, they detect the presence of a compressed signal and try to guess the makeup gain for it.
- delta013, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6@gwinerreniwg
I'm pretty sure it's "the forehead" not "your forehead". Haven't you been listening? Now go watch it again!
/Sarcasm - chess007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Most of the time commercials get muted in our house. Most commercials are so stupid I wonder how anyone thought they would sell products...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2remember the dude who stabs his couch with a HUGE knife, and then twists and turns and digs it? "Accidents *do* happen!"
- nickerbocker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've found on the HD broadcasts of sports games they sometimes have too much of the crowd noise and you can barely hear the announcers.
- spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Don't wake me I plan on sleeping"
-- Postal Service / Sleeping In - fyre2012, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2they'll never turn it down, that's what makes the brainwashing work so well!
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As far as I can work out - and someone may have already said this - it's not that the adverts are 'louder' it's that the TV programmers deliberately turn the volume down on the programs - which encourages you to turn the volume up - so that when the adverts come on the sound appears to be much louder than the programs themselves.
It's a sneaky tactic - but clearly the advertisers don't have access to your TV remote control - so they make you do it instead. - cbcarbaj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i was at CES and talked to a reporter who saw the demo (it was in a private room at the MGM, not on the show floor). One thing she said is that Dolby emphasized that this WAS NOT a traditional compressor - limiter. Dolby is making the claim that they have built a sophisticated sound processing engine modeled on how the human ear/brain perceives sound and they claim there are a bunch of new patents filed to back this up. I'm a little skeptical, but then again if anyone is going to do something new and interesting around this I suppose Dolby might have the ability to do it.
- crazyman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You watch the commercials? I just switch channels.
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