House OKs bill to lower the volume on loud TV commercials

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
...
| Per Char Jackson:
| like who is going to sit through them once they have an option?
|
| They'll just start running the commercials over the programming, like
| they do now to announce upcoming programs.
|
| Ouch! That one hurts!.... -)
|
|
| --
| PeteCresswell


Ouch is right!
I happen to like viewing movie credits
1) at their original speed and...
2) full screen

My father was Producer for Westinghouse Studio One, The US Steel Hour and
Playhouse 90
(back in the 50s)
At that time FCC regulations mandated no more than 3 minutes commercial time
be allowed per hour.
No congress bills...no taxpayer expense.

So they can't do that now?
Oops...forgot $$$ talks

--
Regards,
Richard Harison

In article ,
Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:18:15 -0500, Thanatos wrote:

Guess what? The little button labeled "mute" works fantastically for
lowering the volume levels of commercials.

Mine doesn't work so fantastically like yours does. On my TV's, the
Mute button is completely manual, which is a far cry from fantastic,
and it doesn't lower the volume, it completely mutes it.

Your personal choice to have an anachronistic television doesn't equate
to a need for a federal law affecting all of society and draining even
more money from a treasury that can ill afford it.

In article ,
"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." wrote:

"Thanatos" wrote in message
...

None of which is something the federal government needs to be involved
in.

FCC = Federal Communications Commission.

So what?

Commercials are just as much fair game to regulation as broadcast
TV and subscription TV.

Which is to say none of it should be regulated. It's not the
government's place telling people what can and cannot be on television.

(And just FYI, the Supreme Court ruled long ago that non-broadcast TV
ISN'T fair game for all the content regulation applied to the networks.
The Court said that the "public airwaves" factor is the only reason
content-based regulations for broadcast channels don't violate the 1st
Amendment. Since cable and other subscription services don't use the
public airwaves, any attempt to impose content-based regulations on them
would be unconstitutional. So even if your commercial volume bill
passes, it will only apply to broadcast networks. Anything on cable
channels would have to be exempt.)

IMHO, they let this go for way too long,

IMHO, besides playing traffic cop for spectrum allocation, it's not the
government's place to "let" people do anything with regard to broadcast
TV.

And yes, I know, we're well on the way to total regulation of
everything. You're apparently one of those of the opinion that since
we've regulated 96.4% of everything, we might as well go all the way and
finish it out.

Just because something can be done hardly means it should be done.

so it's long overdue for them to regulate it.

Not hardly. This and at least half of all regulations are a gross
overreach of government power.

Again, I hope the bill passes all the way.

And I hope it dies a quick death.

Guess what? The little button labeled "mute" works fantastically for
lowering the volume levels of commercials.

Yes, it does, but it assumes I have the remote control always available to
me to turn the volume all the way off.

So because you're too lazy to put the remote next to your hand, we
should have a federal law passed affecting an entire industry, costing
taxpayers a mountain of money for enforcement, and encroaching the hand
of government even further into the lives of the people?

I don't believe I've ever seen an argument on Usenet more self-centered
than that. Congratulations!

Should a viewer really have to use technical workarounds, no
matter how easy they are to access, just because of intrusive
advertising?

Yes. Every minor annoyance in life is not justification for federal
legislation. I hate to break the news to you, but you have to wipe your
own ass, too.

The commercial coming in a peak level, including dialog
passages, for the entire duration of the advertisement, and
now even using multichannel surround to distract as well--not
expected behavior, and it's good to see that something is
proposed to try to fix that.

How long has this been going on? Decades? If you're still not
expecting it at this point, you're not the brightest bulb in
the pack.

I expect it, but that doesn't mean it should always be like that.

Huh? You just said that it's "not expected behavior". Now you say it is
expected behavior but that it's just annoying.

Look what happened to internet advertising, starting with text
ads, evolving to graphical banner ads, animated graphical banner
ads, etc. Try NOT using any adblocker, enable cookies, let your
browser run scripts, make sure you have Adobe/Macromedia Flash
installed.

I seem to get by just fine without any of that stuff.

Do you really enjoy that kind of advertising?

Doesn't matter whether I enjoy it or not. It's not the proper place of
government to legislate and regulate other people to ensure my enjoyment
of anything. My enjoyment is up to me to figure out for myself.

If the government were to regulate that, would you really say
"if your not expecting it at this point..." for that?

If the government were to (attempt) to regulate it, they would fail
miserably because US law only applies to the US. The rest of the world
would just continue to do whatever the hell they want with their web
sites.

And more to the point, if I'm paying for a web site, I should be able to
design it however the hell I want. If I want flashing lights and
animations that make you go epileptic, that's *my* choice. It's not for
some government bureaucrat to tell me I can't.

In

Davej wrote:

monied assholes

Maybe you should cancel your Dish subscription to save a few bucks.

And, good luck.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN

Grogan wrote:
Then you have Billy Mays, RIP. I always said he would be the last person to take
along on a long road trip.

And now he and his Oxi-Clean pitch are tormenting sinners in Hell.

Daniel W. Rouse Jr. wrote:

House OKs bill to lower the volume on loud TV commercials

Finally, it took long enough! It hope the bill does pass all the way.

But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write
regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials, the AP
says.

They never heard of an analog or digital VU meter?

More difficult than that. OTA programs that are embedded with DD5.1 usually
have dialog in the center channel. The TV watcher with simple stereo out of
his TV sets his volume level based upon his TV's conversion capabilities.
Along comes the commercial in two channel (at best), maybe even analog, and
levels naturally levels are not matched. I'd love to read how the FCC is
going to attempt measuring this.

Les Cargill wrote:

snip stuff about new software to level loudness

I am very skeptical that this can actually be done well. So it's
Dish proprietary?

No, Dish is getting it from another company. Presumably, that company
would be happy to sell/license it to others.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

"UCLAN" wrote in message
...
Daniel W. Rouse Jr. wrote:

House OKs bill to lower the volume on loud TV commercials

Finally, it took long enough! It hope the bill does pass all the way.

But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write
regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials, the AP
says.

They never heard of an analog or digital VU meter?

More difficult than that. OTA programs that are embedded with DD5.1
usually
have dialog in the center channel. The TV watcher with simple stereo out
of
his TV sets his volume level based upon his TV's conversion capabilities.
Along comes the commercial in two channel (at best), maybe even analog,
and
levels naturally levels are not matched. I'd love to read how the FCC is
going to attempt measuring this.

Discrete multichannel surround seems like it would be really easy--no
channel can exceed whatever hard limit they set on the advertisements. Going
back to the hypothetical 0 dB TV show peak limit and a theoretical -10 dB
limit on the advertisement, then no channel could exceed -10 dB level for a
show with a peak level of 0 dB.

Matrix surround (or even discrete surround downsampled to two channel with
matrix surround capability preserved) may be a bit more complicated.
However, based on my tests using matrix surround and an AVR set in a Dolby
Pro Logic II Movie surround sound capable mode, with the following
configurations:

1. DTV converter box, RCA stereo output to the AVR
2. VHS tapes that were labeled as Surround Sound or Dolby Surround, also RCA
stereo output to the AVR
3. DVD player set to D-PCM (2 channel downsample mode that still preserves
matrix surround sound capability), once again RCA stereo output to the AVR

....it seems that the center and surround channels tend to matrix decode
softer than the front left and front right in all cases. This remains true
even though I have increased the volume of the center channel by +3 dB to
compensate for softer dialog passages.

So then it seems that, in theory, they could still set the limits based on
the front left and front right channels, with a further stipulation that no
encoding shall make the levels of the center, side surround, or back
surround channels louder than the front two channels.

However they do it if the bill passes all the way--I hope means that the ads
will be no louder than, or even softer than, the peak levels of the TV show
currently being aired.

On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:43:39 -0800, Stephen Fuld
wrote:

Grogan wrote:
This may have been mentioned, but the primary cause of complaints is that
commercial audio is heavily compressed so it can be heard. That is, there is
little difference between the peaks and the lower volume. Most of the audio is
near 0 VU, the peak. Programming is more dynamic with some very quiet segments
and then some at full volume. The commercials aren't really louder , but they
sound that way to viewers.

In the most recent Dish Technical Forum, they had an extensive
discussion of this. He said something similar to what you said. It
isn't that the commercials are louder in the sense that the sound
pressure is higher than what is allowed. It is that most programming is
a mixture of soft and loud, but commercials are "all loud" (though not
louder than the loud parts of programs), so you perceive the commercials
as louder.


It's still annoying. When I was a master control op I would grab the master
volume control on the board and pull some commercials down. The computerized
systems of today don't take it into account. We would also monitor the transfer
of a commercial to the cart system that played back the commercial. Today
everything is an audio file and they just don't get monitored, they get stored
to the server.

What I really hate is that some stations are softer or louder than other
stations, requiring adjustment when you switch channels. That's just plain lazy
on the part of the station.

The discussion I mentioned above was in the context of some new software
that will run in the receiver that works to compensate for these
problems. They had, as a guest, a technical guy from the company that
developed the software. He explained how difficult it was. You don't
want to make everything the same loudness, or you would lose the impact
of say a gun shot in a police/detective show. They spent a lot of time
developing algorithms to "do the right thing". IIRC, Dish will begin
installing the software, first on 722Ks starting early next year.

My Sony projection TV has an auto volume feature and it is terrible. No range
and even seems to lower frequency response. Of course it is 6 years old, maybe
newer stuff is out there.

The alogorithms to determine what and when would have to work very well to make
it a viable product. They use a similar method in AFCI breakers for the home.
They "listen" to the line noise and can tell the difference between brush noise
from a vacuum or drill and the sound that a wire makes when it arcs. The problem
is they are getting a lot of false trips because it ain't ready for prime time.

it doesn't really bother me too much since I DVR our fav programs ans just skip
the spots.

Thanatos wrote:
In article ,
"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." wrote:

"Thanatos" wrote in message
...

None of which is something the federal government needs to be involved
in.

FCC = Federal Communications Commission.

So what?

Commercials are just as much fair game to regulation as broadcast
TV and subscription TV.

Which is to say none of it should be regulated. It's not the
government's place telling people what can and cannot be on television.

(And just FYI, the Supreme Court ruled long ago that non-broadcast TV
ISN'T fair game for all the content regulation applied to the networks.
The Court said that the "public airwaves" factor is the only reason
content-based regulations for broadcast channels don't violate the 1st
Amendment. Since cable and other subscription services don't use the
public airwaves, any attempt to impose content-based regulations on them
would be unconstitutional.

Since the cable networks use some unencrypted satellite transmissions to
reach some of their head ends, would not that mean they are in fact
using "public airwaves"?


So even if your commercial volume bill
passes, it will only apply to broadcast networks. Anything on cable
channels would have to be exempt.)

Maybe, but if the public complains enough the cable systems may just say
"what the heck, just do it."


...