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"Loud Commercial" Legislation Proposed In US Congress
Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"
I hate loud commercials too, but this is just too much government IMHO. I'd much rather just have intelligent TVs or receivers that turned the volume down upon detecting a commercial...based on the settings *I* want, not what the government thinks is best for me.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I believe new fangled TVs nowadays have a special feature that keep the decibals between any certain range you prefer, or some system similar to that to keep the loud bangs down while keeping the quiet dialogue up.
It'll only be another decade before it's standard, and this law (if it passes) is deprecated.
dvr
Aren't there TVs that will automatically adjust the volume for this very reason? That is, if you aren't skipping the commercials with a Tivo anyway.
Do we really want the government telling us what to do on that level?
But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'" ...every time my wife yells at me to "turn down that damned TV" because commercial suddenly starts blasting, the advertising executive for that commercial gets a 24 volt shock?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It seems that if each channel is already broadcasting whatever commercial they decide (and aren't just allowing some 3rd party time to broadcast over the channel for commercials), they could simply normalize the audio to be in tune with their shows prior to airing. They'd just need to process the commercials they receive one time before sticking them in rotation, and tada, no more screaming commercials... or am I misunderstanding how this works? Presently I can only imagine this is due to laziness on part of the channel, and a twisted sense of greed on part of the offending commercials.
"We're gonna fight a few stupid wars in which thousands of people will die needlessly, and our country will go broke!" BOO!
"Also, we're gonna pass a law to make your commercials less loud!" YEEAAAHHH!!! WE LUVZ U CONGREZZ!!!11!! USA USA!
While I certainly agree with the sentiments of those who've complained, I don't really want yet another FCC regulation or the like. I think the appropriate people to complain to would be the networks. I am not so naive as to think that would necessarily solve the problem, but that is at least where the problem is. Gripe at them, or perhaps push for a TV (hardware) feature that would accomplish what you want.
You take the average gain of the last 30 seconds of a program before it goes to commercial, and don't allow the commercials to be any louder than that.
If I can make karaoke and techno music automatically crossfade with my meager skills(link below)
http://www.facebook.com/v/203775860215
Then surely a TV station or broadcast network could make commercials stay at the same gain as the programming.
With all that's going on in the world, this is what we are paying our legislators to address? When are the next elections again? Come on people, we have to be able to do better than this.
Enough with the over-exaggeration, she seriously has to close the windows? Maybe shes watching TV too loud in the first place. And Ive never seen an ad that pumps up the volume more than a few bars if at all, so rather than trying to get her name on a piece of legislature, she should focus on her own habits?
The apparent volume level is very hard to regulate when the sound sources are so very different. One apparent solution could be to put an - even more - aggressive compression to the broadcast sound, but that would just piss me off. Overly compressed sound sounds like a turd sandwich, but would however even out volume levels. This is by the way more of a client-side solution, which I just right now realize is no solution at all to this problem.... Yes, requiring the networks to even out sound volumes at the source would be a good idea... as long as they do not compress the sound more than they do now!
Maybe they can LEGISLATE ALL CAPS and excessive PUNCTUATION NEXT!!!!!!!!!!
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Okay, first, thanks for recognizing the problem. But there's no way to legislate such technical detail because volume is subjective, not objective. Do you measure the peaks? The frequency spread? What about people who have hearing problems? They have a different idea of what 'loud' is. The problem is something called "audio compression" -- which results in a higher apparent volume. TV shows use a wider dynamic range than commercials -- commercials can be heard even at very low volume levels because they occupy a very narrow frequency range.
Legislate commercials to have a lower volume level and they'll come up with other insidious ways of annoying you (ie, capturing your attention)... Like shaky-cam and that annoying slow-zoom rotating text crap. Seriously... Go to the heart of the problem: Make invasive advertising illegal and give multi-million dollar fines to anyone who distributes such content. Also... bring back Congress issuing Letters of Mark. I'll take one for the executives of Fox, kthx.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I thought no matter how the ads source are like, the TV/radio techies has to 're-align' the sign so that they are in similar range (normalize, limit/compress, EQ). Yes? No? Why do we need more legislation?
I would hope that advertisers would be considering how to keep TV relevant so that they can continue to have someone to watch the ads rather than continuing to alienate the few viewers they have left.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
and I'll put money down and bet that ABC is one of the worst offenders. It's about damn time congress looked into this.
This means Hadden Enterprises won't be born, and Contact will never happen...
Please don't destroy my dreams, Congress, please...
Many TVs have the ability to auto-level stuff.
But if you've got audio running to a receiver, the receiver has to do it (and likely doesn't).
At best, you've got dynamic range compression modes, which kill off the sound quality for normal programming.
Even if we have a magical loudness law that everyone magically decides to abide by, the latest tactic I've seen is far more annoying.
Commercials now exploit surround sound to the extreme. The soundstage is either panning back and forth and around, or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
There is an issue with Dynamic range compression use by broadcasters and advertisers to increase the apparent volume of sound while staying within legislated limits. That trick is not something that can be easily regulated, unless you do something silly like requiring all sound clips to be stored on records.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I've seen this here in Oz, smarmy TV spokesdrones telling us that the volume is no higher during the ads, this is true, as they are discussing the peak value in decibels.
What they don't mention is the loudness (the amount of sound) has been cranked right up, which is why they are too "loud"
When we want to discuss loudness, they always come back with irrelevant facts about volume.
This is NOT a signature.
Let's get a similar legislation in the EU
.. and this is coming from a guy that works with advertising )
(
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
I fixed my problem. I turned off cable/satellite, signed up to x-box and netflix. No more commercials, and and currently have an online library of well over a years worth of stuff lined up to watch.
Did I mention no more commercials?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Sometimes the commercials stay quiet altogether? That's not a failure, that's a "happy accident."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
There should be 2 volumes you can set on the TV.
1. Existing TV volume
2. Decibel limit
Once the decibel limit is reached the tv set compensates by turning itself down in real time.
Legislate that every TV sold has number 2 on the basis of health and safety. Stiff fines for not complying or trying to circumvent.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Everybody knows the television broadcasters never turn up the volume for the commercials -- that would be unethical! They turn down the volume for the actual programs instead.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I am by no means opposed to regulating advertising; if anything, there is not nearly enough regulation of advertising. That said, unlike intrusive junk mail in all its forms -- postal, spam, telemarketing -- television advertising isn't attached to anything vital and is therefore easy to avoid: turn off the TV. No one needs television, and its one practical use -- news -- is much better satisfied by literally every other medium by which news is available. It's just a source of entertainment, and it is almost completely paid for by advertising. If you want to watch TV, the terrible hardship you must endure is hitting the mute button when the ads come up, you poor thing.
This is nothing more than a politician looking to score some easy votes by attacking something that everyone dislikes but which, since it actually harms no one, won't matter much if the bill disappears in committee and is never seen again. Congress' time would be better spent doing something about unavoidable forms of advertising instead of making a fuss about one of the few entirely avoidable forms.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I've spent the past 5 years in Germany and Japan and while I don't watch much TV, I have been at hotels and just flicked it on for a little bit. While TV is pretty stupid the world round(Germany has a show about a monkey veterinarian and is obsessed with model shows, Japan has a lot of shows where you watch people watching TV....), what is refreshing is what I DIDNT see, namely commercials for drugs(most of which have a generic equivalent that does pretty much the same thing) and commercials for lawyers. Banning these drug commercials would pretty much automatically lower health care costs IMO.
Monstar L
What? No exemption for campaign commercials?!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
This even happens a lot on Hulu, and I have to turn it down whenever those commercials come on, because its really annoying.
I don't really know if legislation is the answer, but honestly its annoying and I really wish *something* could be done about it, since the content distributors don't seem to care.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
The "volume" of commercials is exactly the same as television shows. Someone screaming on a TV show is just as loud as someone screaming on a commercial. The trick that commercials do is compress all of the audio into the high range. There are no quiet subtle sounds in a commercial. To make commercials not audibly jump out at you TV channels would have to run a filter with an algorithm to reduce the perceived volume of commercials. This could also easily be done by a human. Both methods require another step in the process which costs money, and is technically lowering the volume of commercials below that of TV shows. Advertisers will fight it forever or find another way around it.
You people are freaking crybabies. Who cares how loud the commercials are? Get a life.
You wouldn't understand freedom if it knocked you upside the head.
The solution to the problem is very easy.
1. Put forth legislation saying that the new policy will be "anytime any consumer complains about commercial volume levels, the network will be fined $100, with no oversight or guards against abuse." I.e., threaten to put complete ultimate power in the viewers' hands. Bitchy viewers will be able to drain as much money from the companies as they want--the only limiting factor will be how many times they can dial the phone number.
2. Continue to advance this plan while the networks scream in protest. If they don't believe you will actually implement the new policy, it won't work.
3. Notice how suddenly commercials don't seem to be louder than the programs around they anymore. Almost as if the networks have always had the technical capacity but just never had the *motivation* to do it.
4. Quietly drop the legislation you no longer need.
Seriously, those of you who think we dont need this are just retarded. The commercials are fucken three times louder than the shows sometime. Comedy central is the fucken worse at this. Southpark with low volume and then BOOOM with the fucken commercials. Solve the problem with technology? Um, no. The one thing the FCC should be doing is controlling the technological aspects of transmission. Jesus... I hate gobberment interference with anything... but fuck. We need a SINGLE STANDARD TRASNSMISSION VOLUME. I would like to see a knives fall out of the sky and kill anyone who is against this idea. /. users often make me want to smoke crack just to get to their level of fucken stupid.
Add some noise or crank up the gain right before the commercial airs.
That silent staredown would suddenly have a hash of white noise/crickets a tenth of a second before the commercial.
Loud commercials are the perfect reminder that I've forgotten to fast forward the DVR. Commercials that employ this behavior are really just shooting themselves in the foot (not to mention the station's foot).
If the federal government can regulate that television commercials not be slightly louder than adjoining programming, then what can't the federal government regulate?
The type of lightbulbs we can use?
Oh, wait, we've already crossed that bridge. Alright guys, I give up, you win. Tell me when the new Right to Exist tax is coming due (mandatory health insurance coverage), and I'll send that check right over to you. Will you be sending someone by to pickup my first born while you're at it?
I hate the loud commercials ( ones I don't skip with TiVo ) but like others, don't think it requires the government to step in.
Instead, we just need DVRs to skip or TVs to mute, what it deems to be commericials. If relative volume worked well to find and negate the commercials, the networks would be encouraged to level the volume to as not to get skipped or muted.
iplayer
I used to work at a TV station and we never did anything to alter the sound of any of the programming or commercials. I am sure that almost all other broadcasters have the same policy. In fact the sound Can't be louder because of the technology, if the audio is too loud the audio will become distorted or unlistionable.
The problem actually occurs when the commercial is edited down during filming and production. This is where the sound is Compressed which essentially brings all of the Lower volume portions of the sound Up to much higher volumes often equaling the the Higher volume portions of the sound. This is not really any louder. The highest levels are not affected so it's not actually louder, but since the lower volumes have been pumped up, it appears to be louder.
The summery here is that, it's not a problem with the Broadcasters, the problem is with the Advertisers. The ability for a broadcaster to detect and correct this problem would be huge if not impossible. I can understand why the FCC gave up on it the first time.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
This idea:
Make them meet specs on the program volume. Unlike AM radio where everything was compressed/limited to as "loud sounding as possible", what makes it possible for commercials to really blast is the fact not that they're turned up extra loud -- the program is turned down to leave headroom for that crap -- the commercials are at 0 dB. So, it's actually *you* that turned up the TV too darn loud, because you couldn't hear the regular program unless you did. You had to because they limited the program to like -20dB.
Stinks to be so easily manipulated, eh?
And yeah, goodluckwiththat. Good programs have good dynamic range and may be soft for extended periods normally, with no trickery going on.
I recall turning on the volume normalizer feature in "xine" and other media players. If the volume cranks up in the movie, xine gracefully lowers/limits the volume to what I consider acceptable. Something like this could be simply implemented as a value-add feature in new televisions.
After being TV free (only watching shows digitally on my PC for several years) and going back to Cable and Satellite TV was a shocker. I had forgotten how bad this could be. There were commercials that would distort on the television speakers because they were so loud.
It may seem like a small problem, but constantly fidgeting with the volume every commercial in order to prevent waking up other family members, or falling asleep during a show and being startled awake by a very loud commercial is a huge nuisance.
I wonder if some advertisers just make their commercials really loud to stand out, or if broadcasters are paid extra in order to allow the ads to be loud.
...is an advertiser. There are actually lawyers I like, but I have never met a single marketing or advertising person that I didn't have an urge to strangle. It's their mission in life to lie to and get in the way of as many people as possible. At least lawyers are specific in their targeting.
I don`t watch TV. EVER.
It's the dynamic range is being compressed so they are not quiet.
The music industry is dealing with the same things,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
in respect to advertising on tv.
http://silentsentences.blogspot.com/2008/01/some-thoughts-on-extreme-dynamic.html
Do something about it, personally. You can even do it tonight! Turn off the TV. I did over a decade ago and haven't regretted it since!
I'm tired of the networks jacking the commercial sound up, its bullshit...
The networks don't necessarily boost the volume, but you're correct in the sense that they don't do anything to stop commercial developers from boosting the audio, which they can do quite easily. TV professionals have the technology to equalize the volume. There are still a lot of tricks you can employ to make your audio sound louder at the same volume, so even a limiter won't completely fix the problem. But that first step would help a lot.
Some of the networks are getting religion. I've heard a few adds that were definitely and obviously limited. They sounded like crap.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
OK, fair enough. Here's my problem.
I listen to television programs at volume "6." Every damn time a commercial comes on, I have to jump to my remote and crank it down to "3" or get blasted through the back wall. Sometimes I'm in another room of my house, and I can hear the commercial plain as day, which I'm sure is the whole damn point.
How about we write the regulations this way? "Whatever the Hell it is that you guys are doing to make sure I can hear about Snuggles the Toilet Paper Bear even when I'm sitting on the bathroom, you will cut that crap out."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
..ah, they must be what you poor devils who don't have TiVo or some other DVR have to sit through.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
When they make the commercial, can't they just talk quieter ?
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I got rid of my TV feed service years ago. The content is mostly (like 90%+) mindless drivel, and the ads are insidious. When I'm in a room with a TV, and I hear how loud the ads are, I laugh, and ask them to mute it.
We now have free, on demand movies with most cable services, we have Netflix, Hulu, Tivo, Cablebox DVR, Joost, Miro, Mythtv, Apple TV, Roku, Boxee, PS3 streaming, we have Itunes, and to top all that off, there is an expanding vibrant black market - all getting around the mess of broadcast TV ad delivery. Plus: (...plug...) there are lots of decent open licensed content that you can find, and that market is growing.</plug>
I say let the dinosaur-age broadcasters keep shoving awful ads and crap programming down the TV feed. Why write laws to try and help them provide a better service? Anyone with half a mind left would have dropped it already, and younger minds will see it for what it is: mindless distraction to suck the life out of you.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
Also, on a less serious note, ban commercials from using that one blaring alarm clock stock sound that they all love to use. You know, the one that sounds exactly like the alarm clock I had for years, and always makes me feel miserable and pissed off.
Having worked in audio production for many years I can say that in my experience ignorant people from ad agencies judge how good a studio is by how loud they can mix the commercials. Its nothing to do with the TV stations.
The problem is commercials are mixed with LOTS of compression (which limits the dynamic range) and recorded to the master tape at the maximum level it can handle. Movies and TV shows are mixed with a lot more dynamic range to allow for example, a gunshot to sound louder than a voice.
If the TV stations consistently lowered the level of commercials when they transferred them into their systems (by 3-6db), then they would sit better after programs and wouldn't send us all grabbing for the remote to mute them. It's not going to stop me from muting them, but then I hardly ever watch TV as I find it mind numbingly boring and retarded.
Also in response to some sort of volume limiter that kicks in when the level gets loud, its only going to ruin your movie soundtrack and make those huge explosions small... so IMHO its a bad idea.
My idea was to scan the picture for the TV station ID which they impose over the programs but not commercials and detect which is which by this method or link the TV to a internet based service which can tell you when commercials are playing on your channel and auto-mute and dim the picture. Probably people would pay for a service like this.
This Christmas season I thank God we have brave representatives like Anna Eshoo willing speak truth to power on the pressing issues of our time.
After recently championing regulation of light-bulb-screwing-in, environmental-windshield-tinting, and now this, I feel that through the courageous efforts of our government, the dream of Dr. King is finally being realized. This is the change we were waiting for, my friends. This is change we can believe in.
You are next.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Stop watching TV.
POKE 36879,8
What about doing away with loud ties while we're at it? Or Hawaiian shirts, period.
I love when a local ad comes on, trying to be loud like the big boys, but somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong, so the result is just distorted, clipped noise that barely sounds like speech at all.
WE-OME TO FU-IL-UND W-RE WE ALW-S H-E THE B-ST PR-ES ON ALL - -ND US- VEHICLES!!!!
The only problem is if it's late at night, the humor of the failure is often not enough to overcome the anger.
Yeah this sounds like a worth while cause.
that will compress the dynamic range of loudness, so you don't have to sit there and jack with the volume control while watching a movie when it goes from dialogue to exploding helicopters. This also works for commercials.
On a more serious note after the hook, I read somewhere that the Soviet Union had prohibited this many years ago, as well as prohibiting advertising to children, which is something we still haven't gotten right here in the USA. (I'm still a bit on the fence about the latter, since an argument to allow it might be made using an immunological analogy.)
THANK YOU! (Was that loud enough?)
I've no points so this will have to do. If you talk to almost anyone about commercials, they might admit to liking a few of the funny ones here or there, but by and large, I think you'd struggle to find a lot of people who want to watch commercials, who seek them out, and take measures to watch them when they would otherwise be interrupted. Basically nobody gives a shit either way about watching commercials.
I don't watch a lot of "live" TV these days, and as a result I really have no tolerance for commercials when I encounter them. So I mute them.
My "opt-in" approach is nothing novel -- on the slim chance that I want to hear whatever the un-programming is saying, I'll un-mute, but otherwise I assume that the sounds coming from commercials are at best disposable to me, and at worst, really fucking annoying.
I do this everywhere I can, and I've yet to meet a single person who wanted to hear commercials when I was muting them.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
no more horribly loud "Come visit California Ads'!
You can make rules that the default broadcast volume must have an average value between X and Y dB, and a max value of Z dB when sound is being used as an effect. Even if the commercial wants to use explosive volume at Z to make you pay attention, they can't pound you with it the entire commercial without sending the average above Y. Shows operating at a whisper would still need to show up at X, requiring whispers to be audible to the listener so they don't' have to crank the volume up during a show.
Ask the TV industry and sound producers what these limits should be to ensure quality. Because I guarantee that producers hate the tacky yell-at-the-audience adds as much as the rest of us.
Just limit the maximum level of advertisements to the average level of the preceding show.
It shouldn't harm the ads' dynamic range too much, since they effectively run at one level now - maximum.
It also seems relatively simple for broadcasters to enforce.
The point is that most television advertising is stupid as f*ck, degrading, and a generally an insult to most people's intelligence .... loud or soft
Years ago I got an Alesis Nanocompressor for my parents and installed it inline between the audio outputs of the cable box and the TV. Now the blasted commercials bother them no more.
Cost: $50 used plus some audio adapter cables.
Yes I know some TVs have built in compressors. Guess what, they don't work worth a damn.
Commercials are what drove me to dump cable/broadcast TV forever... not just the volume but the increasing ratio of ads to program per hour. Way too many commercials and they're even showing them in sidebars during the program. I ceased watching TV since 2000 and I do not miss it.
If the government wants to help, they can mandate decent quality compressors in new TVs that are enabled by default. It won't cost any more than those V-chips or the digital TV receivers.
The FCC has been hearing for DECADES about obnoxiously loud commercials, and now they want to help...?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, if they hadn't become so obnoxious, these things would not *work*. I don't think the advertisers have realized that they have enabled the commercial skip they so despise.
This is a problem with the Master Control of the stations. They have absolute control over volume and can screen commercials before they air. If you think commercials for a certain station are coming in to loud write a letter or call the stations central office. This includes cable stations.
I worked as a master control operator and it was one of my jobs to screen commercials and turn them up/down based on a set db the head master control operator had determined. This was back when we were using tapes! How hard can it be to do this when everything is digital and automated?!
haha, seriously though. If everything was ReplayGained then it wouldn't matter. And everything would sound better, unless the morons still compressed the hell out of it before running it through the mandatory ReplayGain process. In which case it wouldn't be any louder, since it's ReplayGained, but it would sound a lot worse from having no reasonable dynamic range. If everything, TV, movies, CDs, were recorded/engineered from the beginning with the thought that the last process in the chain had to be a run through ReplayGain, man, music would sound good again!
In modern times we use mpeg stream format differences to extract commercials from programming. Characterising loudness can help in cases when this is not reliable. Using both methods in tandom has the potential to significantly improve commercial detecting software systems.
The only thing better than not having to fast-foward commercials is for them to be automatically removed.
Any legislation making it harder to detect commercials is bad legislation. I hope you will send letters to your members of congress expressing your opposition to any such legislation.
... in radio, and here's the thing. Yes, we use processing (compression/limiting) to make ourselves as loud as possible without overdriving the transmitter (the technical term is "overmodulation," and it's illegal because it causes interference).
... well, we already do that. We use the Omnia processors (www.omniaaudio.com) ourselves; others (such as Optimods -- www.orban.com) do as well. But it's very expensive.
But we routinely receive pre-packaged audio that is ALREADY processed. When we "re-process" it, it sometimes makes it sound louder. (Certainly less dynamic range, and typically more distorted.) Commercials are by far the most common offenders. Some of these are even EQ'd so that the bass is severely cut, coupled with an annoying peak in the response from 2-3KHz, where the ear is most sensitive. Any rational, cost-effective metering will show it to have the same "level" as our normal program audio, but it WILL be harsher and louder-sounding.
However, I'll defend our processing (we use Omnia processors at our stations -- www.omniaaudio.com); it does a remarkably good job with 90-95% of our audio, including some of these badly-produced commercial and satellite feeds.
The problem doesn't afflict standard broadcast radio and TV stations nearly as much as it does cable and satellite channels, probably because these smaller providers can't afford (or don't want to pay) to put top-notch processing on 20-100 different channels.
(In fact, I called one of our satellite providers a while back, complaining about varying levels, and their engineer admitted to me that the didn't have any processing on their airchain. They expected OUR processing to "clean it up.")
The proposals here to divide things into spectra and measure it that way?
And finally, yes, this is all subjective, anyway, as others have pointed out.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
WTF??? This is neither "news" nor "for nerds"...
@sshatrack
I'm boycotting commercial television and cable and get my content from the net. While I miss live sports I don't miss all the other garbage. The news and opinion shows have lost all credibility and I hold the media largely responsible for electing the gang of incompetants who call themselves the U.S. government by their slanted news and opinions. Enough.
This is not that difficult a problem. The industry apologists, and many people here, talk as if peak signal level were the only measure of loudness. It isn't. It isn't even one of the usual ones. There are quite a few ways of measuring volume. In addition to those routinely used by electrical engineers, such as RMS power, there are measures that take into account the properties of the human auditory system, which exhibits differential sensitivity to different frequencies. Measurements made for purposes such as concert hall remediation, by-law enforcement, and industrial safety, are usually made with instruments that filter the input according to a filter contour based on that of the auditory system. Look up the "A-contour", the "B-contour", and the "C-contour". There is a whole little corner of psychoacoustics devoted to the perception of loudness as a function of the spectrum of the signal.
Some decisions would need to be made as to which loudness measure to use and over what time window to compute it, but once this choice is made, we can either use it as the criterion in legislation or use it as the basis for a more sophisticated system of automatic gain control. With digital TV, implementing such processing should not be too difficult, and individuals could even adjust it to suit their preferences and auditory systems.
Make it simple, build a filter into the tv to limit the loudness....
jeezus, why must we make a mountain out of a molehill with everything...
Part of the problem is that the advertisers take a cue from the CD loudness wars and introduce intentional clipping in their audio track. This has the effect of building more energy into the signal which enhances perceived loudness. Another plus (for them) is that a speaker can't actually stop its excursion in one direction when it gets to the clipped part of the waveform. The inertia of the moving element takes it further before the magnetics can pull it back for the return trip. This effectively allows them to turn your speakers "up to 11" for free.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
This is not a democracy. It's supposed to be a democratic republic, but it isn't that either. It's a dollar-ocracy. Dollars buy votes at the representative level, and the system accommodates the needs of those providing the dollars. You can pick new representatives, but only from those chosen by "the party" for you to pick from, and they *all* adhere to the dollar-ocracy mechanism, so you can't change how the system works. At all.
Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Dolby have an ~$4 dollar solution for this problem. "Dolby Volume" processors are currently fielded in about 12 to 14 Consumer devices - High end A/V receivers, a few laptops and 4 Toshiba LCD Television receivers. Look forward to the day when Dolby Volume is incorporated into a great many more devices, to include built in audio in PC motherboards. Not only will our viewing be more pleasant but surfing the net at a fixed volume will actually be possible. Support Dolby by visiting their web site for the demo and asking your equipment suppliers for this essential feature in an increasingly louder world. . . http://www.dolby.com/consumer/understand/volume/dolby-volume.html
It's a system where every dollar gets a vote.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
trick is to just use the mute button. Then you don't have to play with volume.
The mute button is instantaneous as well. So it's easier than volume.
Your strawman fails, fraud is done by the minority and is not an accepted practice by the majority.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
If regulation becomes likely, the advertisers will say, "If you force us to control the volume of our commercials, we'll have to increase the cost of our products to offset the extra effort it will take to comply."
I not only mute commercials immediately, I leave the room or look someplace else. In addition to the annoying increase in volume, they are using bright flashing or strobe lighting effects, jamming about 5 different, still images into a second, fast motion to slow motion or the reverse, focusing on someone's nostril hair while they talk about some personal problem, tinting the sky (the PGA's favorite effect), etc, etc.
So other groups that should be called out on this are the producers and directors of the commercials. They go to school and learn about all the COOL effects that can be used and then they can't wait to use them all in a single commercial. These rookie techniques remind me of the "blink" tag or GIF animations during the early days of the net.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
that require NO government intervention WHAT SO EVER...
1) DVR... fast forward through the annoying things...
2) Mute button... works every time...
I suffer from aspergers syndrome and some of the things that i am hypersensitive to are light and sound
watching tv for me means having to monitor the sound pretty carefully, when i as a viewer shouldnt have to, it should be the broadcasters responsibility, and not somethign that should have to be set by law
but i guess since the media has ignored people like me for 50 years because they think or believe that by raising the sound level they can sell crap to people, they will continue to ignore us.
in my own way i protest, i refuse to buy anything that is advertised on tv.......
theres warnings on games for people who may suffer fits from rapid colour changes etc, which is good
but there seems to be no acknowledgment for those of us who are exposed to discomfort by this the most common form of media
Sorry, I was having trouble reading because of the loud commercials.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I am thankful that they do; I just wish they had more taste. No... just better taste.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The simplest-piece-of-code-I-ever-wrote-that-did-a-kick-ass-thing, was a few lines to scan a test file for comercial breaks. Usual TV volume is about 70-80% of peak with longer spells of quiet, and the adverts are heavily compressed and really don't have any quiet periods. Algorithimically that is easy to find and mark. From there you can cut, skip or mute as desired.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Its very simple. The FCC just requires that commercials be broadcast with the same sound levels as the programming. Anyone not complying loses their license, and may not be broadcast/rebroadcast via cable or satellite or Internet.
are not the same. Volume measures pure energy levels (in Db) whereas loudness is based on psychoaccoustics. In particular the Fletcher-Munson curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher-Munson, which details the perceived response of humans to different frequencies at different volume levels. The supreme court was either ignorant or corrupt when they said that it is not possible to measure "perceived loudness". Measuring devices for this have existed for quite a while. There is a similar problem with songs prepared for radio play. In order to attract attention producers boost the loudness of the cuts, leading to an overall lowering of quality (namely dynamic range) for pop songs.
The fed caused the current financial crisis.
Hth.
Deleted
VDR devices like MythTV can detect changes between commercials and shows now :
http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/how-commercial-flagging-works.html
But the user is normally responsible for actually pressing the skip to next change button.
If the commercials are really louder however, they may be identified automatically by examining the auto during the upcoming scene, and the volume muted accordingly.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The real problem isn't the sound level/compression whatever, that is just a symptom. The real problem is to many ads. We as people are becoming better at tuning them out and so the advertisers think only of their own ad and try to think of a method to become impossible to notice. It is a constant arms race and that is a REAL problem, because arms races are done between enemies. Do you as a merchant really want your customers to think of you as the enemy? Does the TV network want people to fight their audience?
I barely watch TV anymore, simply because the ads have gone out of control. For the Americans, I grew up in Holland were we had ONE tv network (if you wanted to watch another channel, you tuned into the neighboring country) and no ads on Sunday and other Christian holidays. During the weeks ads were only between programs. Now we got 30 or so channels and are blasted by ads. And I watch fewer ads then ever. Progress? I think not.
There used to be booze and cigs ads before the movies, I don't drink or smoke but they were intresting to watch. Didn't work since I didn't buy but at least I didn't resent every second of watching them. Then they banned them, now we got ads so horrible I actually walked out of the movie and demanded my money back.
In the fight for our eyeballs, advertisers are actually loosing eyeballs and rather then agree one some set of guidelines to stop this, they race each other to the bottom. Right now the ads on Discovery and such in Holland are for SMS. It can't pay much (I pray to god that it doesn't because I don't want to live in a world where there are millions of people who fall for these obvious scams "sms your name, his name to see if you will be together for ever This is part of a subscription plan which will charge you 4.95 per sms for the rest of your life, three times a day") but they still blast every 15 minutes. What is Discovery thinking? I can just download the shows you know. I don't even dare to drive a car, because if I did, people might think I watched a car ad (about 50 IQ points BELOW a SMS ad).
Why not instead make quality TV, then charge a premium for a 30 second slot every half hour. Captive audience who is sure to pay attention. But no, commerical break is when people have become trained to go to the toilet or have a quickie and advertisers are determined to give us even less reason to watch...
If McDonalds was an advertising company, they would try to boost dropping sales by injecting extra lard and making the que's double long. Because the best way to get more customers is to be extra horrible to them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No, there is no "fair" way to write the text when you already know that those subject to the rules will hire very expensive law firms to find any and all loopholes.
I have rules in my online game (battlemaster.org) - and one of them is roughly "attempts to exploit the rules and violating their spirit while formally abiding by the words double the punishment". It's time the legal system adds a rule like that, especially for corporations who willfully and intentionally choose that route.
We have "contempt of court" already. It's time to add "contempt of the meaning of the law" to it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...they can be filtered out very easily by muting the sound and dimming/blurring the screen while they run. For those lost souls who still watch television this might be a means to at least escape part of the annoyance.
The better solution is of course to get rid of TV and get your news and entertainment from the 'net. Filtering out commercial drivel becomes easier as well.
Oh, and for those who think that I am obliged to watch commercial sh*t to 'pay' for all that 'free' content on the 'net I'd like to say 'Ascend Thine'...
--frank[at]unternet.org
The US legislative machine has got completely out of hand. These critters should find something useful, and cost SAVING to do.
The other thing urgently requiring reform are the obscene Parkinsonesque bills which are far too complicated and vastly over long, probably to hide the pork packed in them >1000 TARP ~2000 HealthCare and 72 this. AND bills written for no GOOD reason as amendments (a diff), rather than the proposed new law.
The US needs urgently to reduce public spending and regulate all of its finance industry so the phrase "off balance sheet" is synonymous with "jail time"
Not sure how to solve this?
Easy, the TV station automatically turns all commercials down by 3dB. If the advertisers can't play fair, why should the rest of us?
Seriously though, there are plenty of ways to legislate. You could talk about average loudness over the length of the commercial, etc. There's just no political will to make a change.
I was reading something on this topic a few months ago and the way that I remember it is that under the current laws the volume of the commercials cannot exceed the highest decibel level of the program it is with. There is no restriction on what portion of the program the "loud" commercials are aired with, they can't be louder than the loudest part of the show. So if you are watching a movie that ends in a loud explosion at the end, you get to hear Billy Mays yelling at you every commercial break. I'm on satellite TV and have an older pre-digital conversion television, and I have to say that FX is one of the worst offenders of this. Most channels that I watch I can comfortably have the volume set at just under the 50% marker at a level of 22-25. If I watch anything on FX I need to turn the volume up to at least 30 to make the program hearable at the same level as the other channels, but when a commercial comes on I need to drop the volume back down otherwise it is insanely loud. Its almost like FX airs the show at the lowest decibel of their commercials, then air their commercials at the normal level.
I understand your explanation, but I don't buy that it explains the worst offenders. There are cable channels which seem to broadcast the entire show with its soundtrack turned down so that 1.0X comes out as 0.6X. And since most of the soundtrack is supposed to be at 0.5X, it comes out at 0.3X and I have to turn my TV up a few extra notches to hear the regular dialogue.
Then a commercial comes on THAT'S ALL AT 1.0X and even the quietest part of the commercial is louder than the loudest part of the program. I can't watch those channels anymore. Comedy Central did that several years ago and I complained to them, but they've toned down the effect since then. At the time, they explained that it was just advertisements that were inserted by local cable operators which were louder than the programming. But that was bull.
So I fully support a bill to legislate non-bastard behavior by businesses operating in use of public airwaves and interstate commerce. I just hope the jurisdiction includes those worst offenders.
I had a Magnavox with Smart Sound for many years. It didn't really work. It might have helped make the whispers louder, but the commercials still sounded much louder than the programs on channels that muck around that way.
There was an article on Slashdot many years ago that explained why Smart Sound couldn't work and revealing an improved technology. The problem is that according to older definitions of "volume" the program and commercials were already the same. But according to human perception the commercials were much louder. Smart Sound wasn't smart enough make the distinction. But some new algorithm could.
Ooh, that explains why some commercials jump in 0.5 seconds before what seems like the intended break point. I always thought it was just sloppy editing or some uncertainty of timing when inserting local ads into national broadcasts. But maybe some broadcasters do that to stick in a commercial break without a blank frame and get more eyeballs on the ads.
This is a common practice in the broadcast world. Most commercials arrive on a master copy which is used to build a "comp" reel on tape or video server for on air playback. They are recorded at +4 DB and maxed audio levels. The program usually is played from the master copy recorded at 0 DB audio level. Note: +3 DB is twice the volume of 0 DB. So when the station goes to commercial break, BAM!!!, hear the noise! Stations love it because they know you hear the commercial even if you fell asleep during the movie. I've spent 15 years in the broadcast field and this is practiced everywhere.
Sounds like a good idea, but why does this need an act of Congress? It sounds like something the FCC has the power to regulate without Congressional input.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Why is it I can stream 1500 MP3s ripped from 50+ CDs and in real-time do volume normalization but a TV network can't? This seems reasonable since they plan the programming days in advance.
Volume Normalization is practical, easy to implement, even in streaming content, and a resonable request.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Can't they just use replaygain to eliminate the problem?
> Limiting advertising is a blatant violation of the US Constitution. Duh. You can't do it.
You might want to check with the Supreme Court on that one. Granted, I don't always agree with their decisions, but commercial speech has LONG been more restricted than, say, political speech. In particular, the government has more leeway to restrict the time, place and manner that advertisements are allowed in (e.g. "you can't post advertisements on public property" or "you can't make deceptive advertisements" [1]).
In other words, leaving aside whether or not one interprets it as being in violation of the 1st Amendment, the government can and has done so.
Given that prohibiting "loud" advertisements would be a restriction on the manner of speech and that TV broadcasts are already regulated because the EM spectrum is considered public property, you would have to be a very clever lawyer with some fairly sympathetic judges to get this tossed out on Constitutional grounds.
And very clever lawyers? They would cite lots of case law, have tons of footnotes, and would not use the word "duh" (at least, not in public).[2]
[1] The Central Hudson test says that to decide whether commercial speech gets first amendment protection has the judge consider whether:
1. The expression of commercial speech concerns lawful activity and is not misleading.
2. The asserted government interest is substantial.
3. The regulation directly advances the asserted government interest.
4. The regulation is no more extensive than necessary to serve that interest.
[2] IANAL, but I know better than to make ad hoc pronouncements about the Constitution, as though its meaning were unambiguous and its wisdom infallible.
Since my father had his stroke, he can't stand the loud TV commercials. He now watches TV with the remote in his hand, and hits mute as soon as it goes to commercial.
I listen to ads sometimes. I'd like to have a mute button that just lowered the volume. Imagine. I'd even listen to a reasonable ad, at a reasonable volume.
I'm not sure how you could legislate this problem away.
They'll have to force all programing to be compressed as well, ruining the dramatic use of audio.
All because some nitwit said, "this annoys me ... there ought to be a law" instead of buying a $30 volume regulator. That's OK, broadcast should be mostly gone in 10 years.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Its not so much "black and white", its just stupid people acting stupid saying stupid things.
I love how American's have such a constructed view of who or what the are and what makes them this way. The amount of fictional works of literature that support this is astounding. However if some people took 5 seconds to look around at what is reality, or 10 seconds to actually look into how thing actually operate in the real world, they might be able to remove themselves from this fantasy that has been constructed over the years, that so many seem to adhere to and actually cherish as the American way. They may perhaps be the ideals, however it doesn't reflect reality in the slightest, and typically is a super over simplification of real world processes.
I can't read one more book about a rugged, individualist industrialist, who is for open markets and no regulation, who is fighting against the government and the freedom they are trying to suppress, while at the same time making billions, and sleeping with beautiful women, while toting guns, and getting into fist fights with commies.
Aryn Rand wants here pound of flesh America!
Ben Bova also wants a cut.
Heinlein also called and will arm wrestle you for his IP fee.
Anyway that just off the top of my head I am sure there are more. It might make for good fiction (even if the same principles are expounded over, and over, and over again), but it doesn't have a shred of reality in it.
Except maybe Richard Branson (even his name is right for it!), but he, is , er, British....whoops!
Who is the closest in the US? Donald Trump? Your Fired!
Get the AdBlock Plus people on the job. You won't hear another commercial, and could care less how damn loud they are.
In the beginning, there was null.
I've been voting with my wallet regarding network TV for over twenty years now. While we have a couple of TVs in the house, one is dedicated to viewing DVDs and the other was demoted to console gaming during the transition to digital.
Even before then the TV wasn't on during prime time. I gave up watching prime time TV because of the loudness/stupidity of the commercials and the lack of decent programming. Why waste time I could spend being with the family, reading or playing on the computer just to see things that are fractured by obnoxious commercials.
For the handful of programs that interested me, it was easier to wait for them to come out in DVD.
Fantastic! We need to encourage more legislation like this. If we can just keep them busy with this trivial nonsense, maybe they'll have less time to devote to actually destroying civilization as we know it.
doesn't need an "abouttime" tag; needs a "nannystate" tag
please be consistent
if you don't like those loud commercials, turn off your TV or whatever
Please please please let me "ruin" my movies like that if i switch it on. So maybe I can watch movies at night with out waking up my kids/wife. I'd rather have this in the receiver and have a few profiles that could be swapped on the fly.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
It's been possible for years to isolate and skip over commercials with a pc-based PVR. Programs like BeyondTV, ShowAnalyzer and various DVRMS Toolbox implementations with Vista MC ,W7 MC or MythTV conveniently purge commercials from the show you're watching AND you waste less time watching the show you wanted rather than sit through obnoxious advertiser messages.
The only time I watch commercials is with live sports - since I'm squarely in the target demographic for these type of broadcasts- in general I'm not that annoyed (compared to a commercial for tampons on Mad Men, for example).
and once TV is replaced by Internet programming, there will REALLY be no way to enforce something like that
I've looked at some of the past comments from the user named Coaxial, and the majority of them are trolls. He's obviously trolling you.
Besides, don't let him/her belittle you for your description of 1 mph over the limit. In the course of his previous trolling on other stories he's said a lot worse than "cunt hair".
Just mute it or fast forward them with DVR.
You fucking troll. Ron Paul was a huge success. His libertarian message of freedom was spread far and wide. He became a household name, and that caused a LOT of people to actually listen to what he was saying. He did much to introduce important issues to the social consciousness of the USA, issues that slashdotters care about: freedom of the internet, tech-friendly legislation, economic freedoms, individual freedoms, fiscal responsibility, and limiting the control of big government/brother.
So you gloat that the same puppets won. Well, while you try to dismiss Ron Paul as inconsequential, we will remember this proverb: "If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito."
Nice try. We aren't drinking your kool aid anymore, troll. Romney, Huckabee, same difference. Pointing out that Huckabee has a Prime Time, Mainstream Media TV show doesn't help your argument. Hillary, Obama, same difference again.
Try harder. Your floundering logic amuses us.