Roku's New Wireless Speakers Automatically Turn Loud Commercials Down, Turn Show Audio Up (arstechnica.com)

Roku announced today that it's getting into the audio business with the launch of its in-house Roku TV Wireless Speakers. The two HomePod-esque speakers work exclusively (and wirelessly) with Roku TVs, and feature software that will optimize audio from anything connected to the pair Roku TV, including cable boxes, antennas, and Bluetooth devices. The company also announced a new Roku Touch tabletop remote that's similar to Amazon's Alexa. Ars Technica reports: "Optimized" in this sense refers to the software-improved audio quality: automatic volume leveling will boost lower audio in quiet scenes and lower audio in loud scenes (and in booming commercials), and dialogue enhancement will improve speech intelligibility. Accompanying the Wireless Speakers is the Roku Touch remote, a unique addition to Roku's remote family. The company has a standard remote that controls its set-top boxes and smart TVs, and it also has a voice remote that processes voice commands to search for and play specific types of content. The Touch remote is most like the voice remote, but it can be used almost anywhere in your home because it's wireless and runs on batteries. It has a number of buttons on its top that can play, pause, and skip content playing from your Roku TV, and some of those buttons are customizable so you can program your favorite presets to them. There's also a press-and-hold talk button that lets you speak commands to your TV, even if you're not in front of it. Roku's Wireless Speakers and Touch remote will begin shipping this October, and the company is running a deal leading up to the release. For the first week of presales (July 16 through July 23), a bundle consisting of two Wireless Speakers, a Touch remote, and a Roku voice remote will be available for $149. From the end of that week until October, the price will be $179. When the new devices finally come out, the bundle price will be $199.

Comments

Congress and FCC are worthless.

[geekmux]

"Roku's New Wireless Speakers Automatically Turn Loud Commercials Down"

How is it that Roku managed to do something that the entire US Congress and the FCC cannot do?

Congress passed the CALM Act almost a decade ago. It was supported by every member. They put the FCC in charge of enforcement (because it's their damn job), and allowed citizens to police and report violations. And the purpose of the law could not have been any more black and white.

And yet here we are, several years later, STILL bitching about loud TV commercials and not a damn thing any lawmaker wasted their time on did anything to curb or prevent that.

Are there bigger fish to fry? Yeah. Always. Shut the hell up with that bullshit excuse already unless you're only going to allow Congress to work on "important things". If Congress can't even get something as simple as this right, then we sure as shit shouldn't entrust them with anything that's critical.

No wonder Drain the Swamp was so popular this time around.

Re:Congress and FCC are worthless.

[TheSync]

Major network broadcasters do a great job of managing consistent commercial/program loudness.

Non-network broadcasters, small cable channels, and OTT services do not.

Re:Congress and FCC are worthless.

[tlhIngan]

I mean how hard would it be for providers to run an audio compressor? Set a hard limit for loudness and then some make up gain for super quiet things. I run a similar set up at home.

It's the compressor that's the problem. To make commercials "loud" without "being loud", they do dynamic range compression. It's the same trick they use on CDs during the loudness wars. DRC lets you push the average volume up because you reduce the difference between the loudest and quietest part, and then you just push that volume all the way to just below clipping.

TV programming has more dynamic range, so it appears quieter - if you have 20dB of dynamic range, then if you put it so the peak is at 0dB, most of the audio will be blow -10dB or lower.

I suspect the Roku devices simply capture this - it's easy to get the average volume level during playback and reduce it, especially if it's something with no dynamic range at all. Then you just reduce the volume to the average level and you're done. I've had compilation CDs that were equalized, and some songs were full dynamic range, while others were affected by the loudness wars. You can easily tell because the ones with the loudness wars were one big block on the audio graph and to avoid being too loud, they were normalized and thus were only really using half the resolution avialable because it was halved by 50%.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Speakers that only work with one device? Hell yeah, welcome to the future!

Fix the remote

[Snotnose]

I have a Roku talking to a Pi 3B+ and a 2TB NAS. Buttons the remote needs: FF 30 seconds, rewind 10 seconds, mute (I see the same damn 2 ads every 10 minutes, they got old fast).

Buttons they could repurpose? Netflix, Sling, Hulu, and Amazon.

There. That's 3 buttons that would make my Roku experience 100% better, with no loss of quality (I don't subscribe to any of those channels, the buttons are useless).

And yeah, I have a Sony TM-VX320 universal remote. I found a Roku code (or maybe it was plex), but controlling my Roku from my universal remote makes less sense than driving a DVD in my PS3 with a PS3 remote. In other words, none at all.

Dynamic range is good for music

[piojo]

Dynamic range is great for music, where you don't need (or want) to glean all the information from the work for the optimal experience. Plus, in music, a short loud burst isn't that hard on the ears.

For speech, you need a lot more of the information, so dynamic range is your enemy. It's as in photography, where a scene with a lot of dynamic range is beyond what cameras can capture. And if you turn up a movie volume enough to hear the whispered scenes, the rest of the audio will be painfully loud, and it will probably hurt more than a short cymbal crash of the same volume.

As long as I can turn it off...

[williamyf]

All this post processing is fine and dandy, as long as I can turn it off when I am watching a movie and want to hear it as the director indended.

Basically, think of every movie that has won an oscar in sound-related categories.

Of course, this improving dialogue and boosting volume of soft pasages will be nice for heavy dialogue material, like (melo)dramas, comedy, et al.

And also, the turning down sound of commercials is something I would pay good money for.

But for movies with no commercials (DVD, BD, Streamed), the best setting is the one that turns all this postprocessing off...

Re:It's the modern pop musicification of movies

[cascadingstylesheet]

From the roku website:

consistent volume across loud and quiet portions of movies

So much for dynamic range, isn't that what good speakers are supposed to provide?

Maybe, but I would love this feature.

I hate turning it up so that I can hear whispered dialog, only to have music and explosions blast my ears off the next second.

Unrealistic? Maybe, but it's unrealistic that I could hear someone's whispered conversation in any case. (Not to mention there's scarcely a movie where this would make the top 500 unrealistic things ...)

But can it mute the drug ads?

[RogueWarrior65]

Wake me when it can auto-fast-forward through the commercials.