SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  What's Your Deal!    Commercials
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Commercials Login/Join 
Staring back
from the abyss
Picture of Gustofer
posted
I swear, if you want to make a million dollars overnight, invent an apparatus that will automatically mute the TV when commercials come on and then unmute when your show comes back on.

If I ever get to meet Mike Lindell it'll take all I have to not punch him in the nose.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 19975 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
A Grateful American
Picture of sigmonkey
posted Hide Post
The capability of such technology that one could set in the "settings" menu of a TV has existed for years and should be integrated in every one sold.

Even a simple "+/-" setting with x% above, below or equal to the set volume, (and no matter what the "broadcast as recorded" it would throttle instantly to your choice.

It would be no different (a solution), than the display auto adjusting the brightness, as most already do.

I'd be happy to snatch HisPillow from in front of his face when you go to swing.




"the meaning of life, is to give life meaning" Ani Yehudi אני יהודי Le'olam lo shuv לעולם לא שוב!
 
Posts: 43810 | Location: ...... I am thrice divorced, and I live in a van DOWN BY THE RIVER!!! (in Arkansas) | Registered: December 20, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Only the strong survive
Picture of 41
posted Hide Post
Medicare commercials after December 7 ??
Every hour on just about every channel.
Do TV's have 9 lives?


41
 
Posts: 11828 | Location: Herndon, VA | Registered: June 11, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Oh stewardess,
I speak jive.
Picture of 46and2
posted Hide Post
Two scenarios and two sets of problems:

[A] The constraining of sudden jumps in volume from commercials that are louder than the program you care about and seem to *jump out* at you when they play the commercial. This is similar to the desire to normalize the dialogue (make it louder) and reduce the relative volume of the explosions and such.

These two related scenarios are trivially easy to solve with Hardware that has existed for decades, especially in 2ch/Stereo systems rather than Surround Sound, and is generally reserved for musicians and studios and whatnot, and the name of that solution is ... Compression and Brick Wall Limiting.

Setting aside the aesthetic differences between traditional TVs and HiFi gear and Studio gear, you could, right now, hook up most any 19" rack mount Stereo Compressor/Limiter inline on the stereo audio cables between most any TV and most any Receiver, dial it in, and like magic... the commercials are never louder than the show, the dialogue is relatively louder, explosions relatively quiter, etc.

Such Compressors/Limiters range from $100s/ea to $1000s each, and audio just passes though, and is affected in realtime. Easy as pie, handsoff once setup, and so on.


[B] The auto detection of commercials which then auto mutes things for you.

Theoretically possible, but many factors make it inconsistent and impractical, by design, because they don't want you doing this. To make it possible there needs to be a clear and consistent and measurable difference between the relative volumes of the Shows/Films/news vs the Commercials (factoring in dynamic range), and notably the commerical would have to be louder than the loudest explosion or whatever of the show, and it rarely is. The fuckers make the commercials have inconsistent volumes, too, to confound things. They'd either need to insert a clear marker/carrier signal of some sort that's detectable or use consistent levels across all shows, films, and commercials, which they dont. Else, it couldn't tell the difference between gunfire and the start of a commercial and so on.

Option [A] above is never farther away than n-number of hardware compressor/limiter channels depending on how many audio channels you have, 2ch vs 5.1 vs 7.1, etc.

Just for you, Gustofer, I'll take a measly half million and I will hook you up... Smile

Or for a few hundred to a few grand, anyone can do this themselves with some research and effort. Compression and Limiting are old concepts, well understood, and in use at broadcast and audio facilities and home studios worldwide.

Most folks unknowingly paint themselves into corners with soundbars, BT audio, big comlicated hifi receivers with many channels, etc, rather than discrete components like receivers and traditional amplifiers, etc, where there's simply no place to insert a Compressor/Limiter inline. One needs access to the line level audio (RCA, 1/4", etc) between the source and amplifier(s) for every channel you want to compress/limit or at least a stereo pair before the big-receiver's input from the TV or cablebox/etc so that the compression/limiting happens once for n-surround channels downstream in the big receiver.

Technically software solutions exist too, but it's not necessarily easier or cheaper and adds in a need for a computer to process things and the associated audio interfaces and latency and more so I've just skipped all that, here. A built in TV app *could* do it, if they inserted some carrier signal to denote commercials, but they won't, short of legislation forcing the advertising industry to comply, and fat fucking chance there.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 46and2,
 
Posts: 25613 | Registered: March 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Prefontaine
posted Hide Post
Easy, don’t watch commercial television unless it’s prerecorded and you can FF through the herd commercials. I haven’t watched commercial television in over 20 years. The only LOUD scenes that happen here are when LFE kicks in. Big Grin



What am I doing? I'm talking to an empty telephone
 
Posts: 12568 | Location: Down South | Registered: January 16, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Oh stewardess,
I speak jive.
Picture of 46and2
posted Hide Post
They already time-drift commercials to make it harder to skip them when setting up scheduled recordings, and the show/film start times will actually begin at 11:07am instead of 11am, and the like, and commercials don't occur on a fixed-enough schedule to avoid via scheduling either, very much on purpose, to make these very things difficult.

They want your eyeballs/ears and those sweet sweet advertising $$$$.

But, a single stereo compressor/limiter will help you control such things better.

I'll have to source a link/example later, but I will.
 
Posts: 25613 | Registered: March 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
posted Hide Post
I am going back many years for this -- I had a friend who was a tech guy at a large radio station. He told me that there was a signal that was transmitted on large network systems to indicate the start of a commercial. This was used to allow stations to insert local commercials in place of the national commercial.

He made a home-built device for his personal radio that detected this signal and lowered the volume to an almost inaudible level for the duration of the commercial.

It was more than fifty years ago that he demonstrated this for me, so I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but I do remember him showing it to me, and it worked.



הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים
 
Posts: 30544 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
Picture of smschulz
posted Hide Post
quote:
Easy, don’t watch commercial television unless it’s prerecorded and you can FF through the herd commercials.


Bingo
 
Posts: 22857 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Staring back
from the abyss
Picture of Gustofer
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Prefontaine:
Easy, don’t watch commercial television unless it’s prerecorded and you can FF through the herd commercials.

Well, I've always kept the TV on while home as background noise if nothing else. For years it was FNC, and since I can't stand many of their hosts (Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity can hold hands and jump off a cliff for all I care...and take Dana Perino with them), it's been Newsmax for the past year or so.

Problem is, Newsmax appears to be entirely funded by Mike Lindell and the Balance of Nature folks. There are nearly more commercials from those two outfits than there is news content. Mad

Another business recommendation from someone who doesn't know dick about business except from a consumer standpoint: It's not a good idea to piss off the potential consumer! Neither of those companies will ever get a dime from me.

Most all of my prime time content is recorded though and I do FF through them. It's the only way I could tolerate them.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 19975 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I have such a device. It's called a "wife."
 
Posts: 17121 | Location: Lexington, KY | Registered: October 15, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
eh-TEE-oh-clez
Picture of Aeteocles
posted Hide Post
Auto volume leveling exists on many TVs. I've seen it as a feature on TVs over 10 years ago.

If you want TV as commercial free background viewing, you can get a YouTube Premium account and just have countless hours of YouTube playing (commercial free) from your favorite subscribed channels. The same can be done with Netflix or any other subscription based streaming service.
 
Posts: 13046 | Location: Orange County, California | Registered: May 19, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
There are some folks out there in TV Land offering to help me if my carrot is.... Bent! Roll Eyes


End of Earth: 2 Miles
Upper Peninsula: 4 Miles
 
Posts: 16004 | Location: Marquette MI | Registered: July 08, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
My beef is the fact, that they get away with editing out parts of the program, so they can squeeze in more of Joe Namath and JJ Walker.
 
Posts: 2559 | Location: Central Virginia | Registered: July 20, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I keep Fox News on in the background, often when using my computer, so I'm not seeing the TV, only listening.

And I swear it's the same few commercial jingles over and over and over. I'm pretty sure a lot of them are locally programmed and not on the national feed. The My Pillow ads have declined, but I get a lot of Balance of Nature ads. So you take a fruit or vegetable and freeze dry it into powder, then put the powder in a pill, and expect me to believe the pill is equivalent to the real thing? What is this the 1950's/60's?

The funny thing is sometimes the jingles and music don't tell you anything about the company or product/service.

There is a Sirius XM Holiday commercial and I swear I can't understand any of the lyrics of the jingle. I didn't even know what the commercial was for until I actually saw it. I thought it was some kind of "Hakuna-Matada" native gibberish on some kind of "Christmas in the 3rd world" public service announcement.

And no, I will not buy anything in any of these ads. And the ads make me even less likely on the odd chance I had some other reason to consider then.
 
Posts: 4690 | Location: Indiana | Registered: December 28, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
I have such a device. It's called a "wife."


Same here, my wife mutes the sound, but sometimes she switches to QVC which is worse than commercials.


__________________________________________________

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!

Sigs Owned - A Bunch
 
Posts: 4250 | Location: Nashville, Tennessee | Registered: December 16, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  What's Your Deal!    Commercials

© SIGforum 2024