Law passed in USA to prevent loud TV adverts

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message ...


The Shermans have just passed legislation to outlaw loud TV adverts:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...t-passed-will-
quiet-loud-tv-commercials-within-a-year.ars

"After approval by the House, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness
Mitigation (CALM) Act is now on its way to President Obama's desk. It
was passed by the Senate earlier this year. Rep. Anna Eshoo's (D-CA)
bill will require commercials to be at the same decibel levels as
programs during which they play"

Hope we get something similar here soon.



we've had such a rule for ages. if you feel a channel is ignoring it, feel
free to complain to ofcom.



-- Gareth.

that fly...... is your magic wand....
http://dsbdsb.mybrute.com
you fight better when you have a bear!

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...

Did not Toshiba have some kind of circuit that was supposed to do this in
their TVs some time ago. The problem though is not absolute levels, its the
dynamic range and compression. The same peak levels can be in two bits of
programming but in one the quiet sounds are quiet, but on the other they
are higher. This is the crude circuit in portable tape recorders.
You even hear it on radio quite often. Thus, someone I hope has looked into
this and designed some kind of device to get the levels right.


lots of tvs do - and it's always horrible - first thing i turn off on a new
tv.



-- Gareth.

that fly...... is your magic wand....
http://dsbdsb.mybrute.com
you fight better when you have a bear!

In article ,
Mike Henry wrote:
In the middle of a poignant drama etc things can be different. And no
machine will ever sort this out - short of making the sound on that
drama match the ads, which would be a very retrograde action.

Yes of course it would. (I'm not sure why you turn to the idea of
changing the programme first, though.

Because it's the pragmatic answer, sadly.

It's more intuitive to me that the
adverts should be the things that change: they should be willing to
accommodate the programme that they are being allowed to disrupt).

Something that pays for the programme you're watching 'for free' disrupts
it? It's certainly one way of thinking.

So they can just do it the other way around, then - making the sound on
those ads match that of preceding part of the programme (NB: all at the
advertiser's expense).

The only way this would work would be to have a human rehearse and set
levels on each and every break. Very costly - and the only one who'd end
up paying is the viewer, in one way or the other.

The level of adverts, promos, trails etc - and indeed different programme
levels have been the subject of complaint since TV started. And things
like background music. What annoys one may well be liked or go unnoticed
by another.

--
* What do they call a coffee break at the Lipton Tea Company? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:34:50 +0000, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

The Shermans have just passed legislation to outlaw loud TV adverts:

I do not understand the reference "The Shermans".

Can you explain please?

Hope we get something similar here soon.

Highly unlikely -- in the Free World (tm), the people and their
representative government believe that regulating capitalist
enterprises is a necessary function of government.

In the UKofGB&NI, the Liberal free market government believes in
almost total deregulation, and even the toothless OfCon is, if
Secretary of State for CMS, Jeremy Hunt has his way, will be
abolished.

Furthermore, it is all very well passing regulations, but there are totally
ineffective as demonstrated time and time and time again in the UKofGB&NI
if there is nobody to enforce them.

One very good example of this is Defra and noxious weed reporting, where
Defra stated on their pre-ConDem web site that they did not have the
manpower to actually enforce the law when people reported a problem.

On Sat, 04 Dec 2010 11:07:01 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
pete wrote:
On Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:38:51 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Mike Tomlinson wrote:
Rep. Anna Eshoo's (D-CA)
bill will require commercials to be at the same decibel levels as
programs during which they play"

What a stupid piece of legislation. Decibels don't measure perceived
'loudness'.

Hope we get something similar here soon.

ITV already limit the peak level (in 'decibels') to below the peak level
allowed for programme material.

And advertisers (and "pop" intended for radio/MP3 players) have
for a long time compressed their dynamic range and boosted middle
frequencies to make it all sound louder.
It will be interesting to discover if the american legislation
addresses the _energy_ in the sound, rather than simply its dB
level.

The main problem is the matching of ad loudness to the programme material
either side of the break. On something like the X Factor, the ads don't
sound any louder. Indeed can come as a welcome relief. ;-)

Anything comes as a welcome relief to the X Factor (so I'm told, never
having seen a single minute of it, myself).
The really annoying stuff is the crescendos the programmes broadcast,
themselves. For example, watching BBC Breakfast early in the morning
with the sound at a low-ish level so as not to wake anyone else. Then
suddenly they play their jingle - aaaagh!

I just wish they'd keep their own levels consistent. Peaks for the majority
content should determine the peaks for everything else.

In the middle of a poignant drama etc things can be different. And no
machine will ever sort this out - short of making the sound on that drama
match the ads, which would be a very retrograde action.



--
http://thisreallyismyhost.99k.org/04...1426219860.php

On Sat, 4 Dec 2010 16:14:24 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

On Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:34:50 +0000, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

The Shermans have just passed legislation to outlaw loud TV adverts:

I do not understand the reference "The Shermans".

Can you explain please?

Possibly rhyming slang: Shermans Sherman Tanks Yanks.

Hope we get something similar here soon.

Highly unlikely -- in the Free World (tm), the people and their
representative government believe that regulating capitalist
enterprises is a necessary function of government.

In the UKofGB&NI, the Liberal free market government believes in
almost total deregulation, and even the toothless OfCon is, if
Secretary of State for CMS, Jeremy Hunt has his way, will be
abolished.

Furthermore, it is all very well passing regulations, but there are totally
ineffective as demonstrated time and time and time again in the UKofGB&NI
if there is nobody to enforce them.

One very good example of this is Defra and noxious weed reporting, where
Defra stated on their pre-ConDem web site that they did not have the
manpower to actually enforce the law when people reported a problem.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

In article ,
Mike Henry wrote:
The only way this would work would be to have a human rehearse and set
levels on each and every break.

It might turn out to be the only way now perhaps, but not forever.
Perceptive loudness can already be automatically measured by ReplayGain
just to take one example, so if the process of reducing the ads to match
the programmes can't be automated now, the bulk of it could be automated
in the future with a human only doing final checks.

I'll not hold my breath. Dolby claims to have got the problem of sound
varying in cinemas by automatic measurement. That doesn't work either.

Very costly - and the only one who'd end
up paying is the viewer, in one way or the other.

Red herring: the viewers already pay for everything in one way or the
other. Better to fix the problem than risk viewers getting annoyed to the
point that they switch off or avoid ads using PVRs.

My guess is those who continually complain about the level of TV ads
rarely watch ITV - and already use a PVR to skip through them if possible.

If the broadcasters want to stop haemorrhaging the remaining people who
sit and watch live TV, they'll have to pull their fingers out and make
live TV a less annoying experience (just like it used to be). It's up to
them.

Excuse me? Complaints about ads being too loud are as old as ITV itself.

--
*Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
...

Next up: legislation to prevent advertisers from repeating the same
****ing advert over again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again and again and again....

I can't say I've noticed that as a problem.
A PVR and broadband connection (plus staying away from certain channels)
means I rarely see an ad at all.
--
Alex

In article ,
Dr Zoidberg wrote:
Next up: legislation to prevent advertisers from repeating the same
****ing advert over again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again and again and again....

I can't say I've noticed that as a problem.
A PVR and broadband connection (plus staying away from certain channels)
means I rarely see an ad at all.

Of course if everyone does this there will be no commercial TV at all.
Apart from Sky - where you pay a subscription but still get ads.

--
*If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 10:54:24h +0000, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Of course if everyone does this there will be no commercial TV at all.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

If there was not commercial TV there would be more than enough bandwidth
(terrestrial) for BBC-1 HD, BBC-2 HD, BBC-3 HD, BBC-4 HD, and BBC News HD