I'm addicted to skipping through commercials via TiVo, but when I do watch live television, my eardrums get a major blast whenever ads come on. At first I thought it was just me, then I noticed the lack of volume control while at a friend's house watching a Sex and the City marathon. What gives?
Apparently advertisers think that screaming at us about their products will make us want to buy, buy, buy. But all it ever really makes me want to do is mute, mute, mute. Thankfully, us apartment dwellers who can't handle a lot of neighbor TV noise at one in the morning have the government on our side — a new bill is making its way through congress that requires broadcasters and operators to normalize the volume of commercials on TV.
I guess doctors have known for years that excessive TV volume can damage your hearing, so soon, your ears will be saved from early retirement due to insane TV volume. What about you — do you notice the change in volume when commercials come on?
Mantaray
Killah
7trends
How can you not notice the change in volume. This is great news.
1we watch TV through Hulu.com, which normalizes commercial volume for us...thankfully.
back when i had cable, though? i'd immediately hit the mute button.
2Leo Laporte, then of TechTV, once discussed this. His claim was that because TV commercials are more compressed by networks than programs are, which somehow eliminates part of the sound range, making it SOUND louder, while not actually being louder in terms of decibels. Now, this never seemed right to me, but it's just one explanation I've heard before.
3OMG THIS IS WONDERFUL NEWS!!!
i never thought it was JUST me... but i never really gave much thought to it, except "why the f--- are commercials so loud" as i decreased the volume
i actually don't mind commercials. some are really funny and cute. but i hate the loud volume! i don't want to wake up the rest of my house!
4Hell Yes! I can't stand watching live tv any more because my ears cant take another commercial screaming at me!
5Here in Turkey the commercials are like twice the volume of the normal programming. Too bad this legislation isn't worldwide.
6Anyone else feel like the commercials on Fox are especially bad?
7For some reason, I thought they had passed legislation on this years ago and I wondered why it was never enforced. Guess this would explain it haha
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