Loud/brickwall commercials will soon be a thing of the past!!

[scud133]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100930/ap_on_en_tv/us_congress_loud_commercials_1

 

go Congress! lol

[scud133]

last thing they did before skipping town to go campaign for themselves

[Ernest Buckley]

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100930/ap_on_en_tv/us_congress_loud_commercials_1 go Congress! lol

 

 

Glad to see they`re tackling the tough issues.

[WRGKMC]

I dont know. Its an irritation to be woken up buy those crummy blasting sales guys wheo had too many cups of coffee. On the other hand, Its what our economy is built on. Sales of stuff you just gotta have. It is another infringement on the audio industry. Next they're be checking the DB levels of the CDs produced. I know a few who would be happy about not having to brickwall the hell out of the music though.

 

I guess anything the government can do to stop businesses from making a buck even if it is smashing the percieved loudness seems to be an important item to them whereas other things that truely need to get done get ignored.

 

I'm surprised they didn't require TV manufacturers to install an auto mute option when commercials come on. We pay for the sets, we pay for the cable or dish, then broadcasters swamp the stations every 5 minuites with commercials. To get beyond those, you need to pay extra for premium stations. Even then 90% of what they play are really bad B movies.

 

With the technology available you should be able to do the netflix thing with all these stations. but since the broadcasters get paid from both the Sponcers, Customers, Movie industry in payola of some sort, and likely government in there someplace, they arent going to change anything unless the public demands it. I'm considering going the netflix route here soon. I can get a digital broadcast converter and get my local news.

[TimOBrien]

Loud/brickwall commercials will soon be a thing of the past!!

 

No.... they will reduce the average volume of the commercials by, say, 3db.

 

....then they'll reduce the average volume of the PROGRAMS by 8db.

 

(You'll just have to turn your TV up louder to hear the programs and the commercials will still blast you out of your seat. Oh and have you noticed that they're burying beeper noises, ringing phones and other Pavlovian-attention-getting sounds in the commercials???)

[John Sayers]

It won't work while TV channels broadcast with automatic audio follows picture systems.

 

When I worked in TV audio one of the duties was putting the station to air, I sat behind the video switcher and mixed the audio appropriately. The level you mixed the commercial was dependent on how the program you were coming out of ended. If it ended loud - you followed loud, but if it ended quietly, you pulled the commercials back by up to 20 - 30db because that's when the public get jacked over the loudness of commercials.

 

Additionally you have the leveller in the transmitter to cope with because if the program has a quiet ending the leveller will be lifting the program signal making the commercials come in even louder.

 

In other words the only way to organise proper audio levels is to hire someone to physically do it and who listens to the off air signal and balances accordingly. They won't do it. The station I worked for dropped it and went automatic like everyone else.

[bp]

John, now that almost all broadcast materials are digitally stored, all it take is a simple header on the file that stores the average level of the program and commercials and then adjust all accordingly. Live events would be different but commercial are never live.

[Hard Truth]

 

We pay for the sets, we pay for the cable or dish, then broadcasters swamp the stations every 5 minuites with commercials.

 

 

Free content in exchange for watching commercials is a fair deal. You don't have to pay for over the air TV and the sound and picture quality is noticeably better than cable or dish. Thanks to digital television, which cost broadcasters a lot of money, we now have more broadcast channels and a much better quality signal.

 

However, I don't have a problem with the new laws re. commercial loudness. That law requires that broadcasters get new audio measuring tools and processors.

[Hard Truth]

These are the type of device that broadcasters are installing to comply with the new regulations:

 

Dolby DP600 Program Optimizer

 

For file-based broadcast and postproduction environments, the award-winning Dolby DP600 Program Optimizer ensures loudness consistency from program to program, between programs and commercials, or between the channels within your television service. Postproduction, terrestrial networks, affiliates, and cable, satellite, and IPTV operators can equally benefit from the DP600, which intelligently analyzes and automatically normalizes the loudness of programs in standard broadcast file formats. The DP600 automates previously lengthy quality-control processes, and performs them in faster than real time. It intelligently and automatically sets, validates, and corrects the dialogue normalization (dialnorm) metadata parameter without the need for decoding and re-encoding

[John Sayers]

John, now that almost all broadcast materials are digitally stored, all it take is a simple header on the file that stores the average level of the program and commercials and then adjust all accordingly. Live events would be different but commercial are never live.

 

thanks - I hadn't considered that.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100930/ap_on_en_tv/us_congress_loud_commercials_1 go Congress! lol

 

 

The worst offender of all the brickwall abusers!!!

[Richard King]

I have Dish Network for my television reception. I am very close to dumping them because of the fact that they don't have a clue as to what they are doing when they insert their own ads. I have a (at the time) high end Harmon Kardon surround receiver. Dish sends the audio for their inserted ads in Dobly Pro Logic while the HD programming that the ads are inserted in is in Dolby Digital format. When the receiver switches from Digital to Pro Logic about half the time it nearly sends me through the roof. I measured the difference of right around a 20db bump in volume. I have to grab the remote and hit the pause button to pause the programming until a couple of minutes pass then fast forward past the inserted ads. It is a problem on their end because they do some of the ads properly while others will blast me out of the room. I doubt that the proposed government solution will have an effect on this kind of incompetence. I used to highly recommend Dish Network to people, but no longer do because of this problem.

[bp]

Ads are a combination of national/channel based and local insertion. Standards need to be set so that the two kinds of ads come across with similar gain.

[lsits]

A budget? That's not really important. TV volume is the most serious issue of out time.

[Hard Truth]

The FCC has very little control over cable or dish content, the rules probably apply to over the air broadcasters only. That should improve those channels retransmitted on cable or dish, but won't help with the cable only channels.

[blue2blue]

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100930/ap_on_en_tv/us_congress_loud_commercials_1 go Congress! lol

I'm thinking this won't apply to internet TV sources.

 

Hulu is actually really good about getting their commercials and programs about the right balance (for the most part) but I occasionally watch Perry Mason reruns on CBS.com (same as available through TV.com) and the commercials just BLAST out.

 

I did a check and found that the commercials had peaks 12 dB louder (3 times as as loud) as programs-- and the RMS averages were an utterly insane 18 dB louder! That's four times louder than the program, on average.

 

CBS.com really, really sucks.

[michaelhigh]

Here's the pressing concern: How are you going to kill the Loudness Wars in the commercial recording industry?

[scud133]

 

Here's the pressing concern: How are you going to kill the Loudness Wars in the commercial recording industry?

 

 

Congress (or RIAA) requires a standard dynamic range?

[Hard Truth]

 

Here's the pressing concern: How are you going to kill the Loudness Wars in the commercial recording industry?

 

 

I never have that problem, because I never buy lowest common denominator pop music. The solution is to simply stop buying bad music.

[blue2blue]

 

I dont know. Its an irritation to be woken up buy those crummy blasting sales guys wheo had too many cups of coffee. On the other hand, Its what our economy is built on. Sales of stuff you just gotta have. It is another infringement on the audio industry. Next they're be checking the DB levels of the CDs produced. I know a few who would be happy about not having to brickwall the hell out of the music though. I guess anything the government can do to stop businesses from making a buck even if it is smashing the percieved loudness seems to be an important item to them whereas other things that truely need to get done get ignored. I'm surprised they didn't require TV manufacturers to install an auto mute option when commercials come on. We pay for the sets, we pay for the cable or dish, then broadcasters swamp the stations every 5 minuites with commercials. To get beyond those, you need to pay extra for premium stations. Even then 90% of what they play are really bad B movies. With the technology available you should be able to do the netflix thing with all these stations. but since the broadcasters get paid from both the Sponcers, Customers, Movie industry in payola of some sort, and likely government in there someplace, they arent going to change anything unless the public demands it. I'm considering going the netflix route here soon. I can get a digital broadcast converter and get my local news.

 

The airwaves belong to everyone.

 

I don't have a problem with the government regulating them in the slightest -- in fact, I think that regulation has kowtowed to the vested economic interests that had manipulated the governmental system to build virtually monopolistic structures that for decades cemented their power and unique position in being the gatekeepers of American culture and commerce.

 

Happily, the rise of alternatives to over-the-air broadcast helped erode those monopolistic structures.

 

 

With regard this particular problem, I can think of two entities in my current experience (which involves only online TV as my TV died a couple years ago) that exemplify the extremes...

 

One is Hulu, the class act of online TV. By and large the average sound level of their commercial interruptions is just about the same as the average level of the program content. It's very rare when a commercial blasts out.

 

On the other hand is the mismanaged, clunky, thoroughly obnoxious CBS.com (which also drives much of the content at TV.com). I'm not sure if all their programming vs. commercials are as bad, but trying to watch the 40 B&W Perry Mason (original series) shows they have up (out of around 250 that are available -- if they have 'em, why not show 'em?!?) requires on-edge mute button stabbing if one is not willing to rend one's ears and scare all the neighbors.

 

Struck by what seemed insane gaps between program content and commercials, I actually measured both peak and RMS averages.

 

The peaks of commercials are roughly 12 dB higher than the peaks of the programs (that's three times as loud, for gosh sakes) and the RMS levels of the commercials are a whopping 18 dB over those of the programs. (Yes, that's four times as loud, on average. Four times.)

 

I haven't had broadcast or cable TV for a while now, but I'd say that it's high time for government regulators to strike a blow for sanity in over-the-air transmissions. Hopefully there'll be some trickle down to operations like the woefully clueless CBS.com...

[scud133]

ouch 18dB RMS is a big difference.

[michaelhigh]

 

I never have that problem, because I never buy lowest common denominator pop music. The solution is to simply stop buying bad music.

 

 

This is a subjective statement; your trash is my treasure, so to speak, and vice versa. There's no disputing the fact that the bloody dreaded technique is pervasive in today's market. My not buying a compressed recording has not slowed or stopped the industry from producing them, they're still around.

[John Sayers]

You can ring your bank and get a recorded voice that tells you what your options are and it's annoying.

 

You can get a computer to try and judge relative sound levels and it's just as annoying.

 

When are we going to realise that there are some things a computer can do and things that ONLY humans can do.

[rasputin1963]

Reminds me of how, in the mid-1970's, they outlawed the use of neon signs which were over a certain size or which caused interference with people's TV's and radios....

 

They achieved their goal, but they kinda killed that fabulous neon artform that flourished during 1920---1970.

[blue2blue]

 

ouch 18dB RMS is a big difference.

It's louder than it... uh... looks on paper.

 

It's the kind of thing where you're going to end up owing neihbors or housemates an apology if you're not in the room when the commercial comes on, so that you can stab the mute button in the short window before they blank out the screen and the commercial comes blasting out (typically just after where the break was intended to come in the original edit of the program, which is awkward, but gives you a little extra moment to prepare yourself to gram the remote or stab the keyboard mute button).

 

I have to say that after I lauded Hulu for not often having that problem, a couple times now, I've been knocked back by the occasional way-too-loud commercial -- but it's the exception, not the norm, and it's still not as much of a jump as at CBS -- not by a long shot.

 

(And CBS.com always has the commercial-blast, at least on P.M. and the old Have Gun Will Travel series that they had a handful of episodes of -- but which are now disappeared. I'll admit, I'm trebly mad, first for holding back on the other 210 P.M. episodes, second for nuking Paladin, but, of course, most of all for continually assaulting me with loud ads.)