[US] Rejoice - Louder TV / Quieter Commercials (well, slightly)

[Serra]

The US House of Representatives has approved a bill which aims to limit the volume of television advertisements.
...
The CALM bill means that within a year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must introduce guidelines proposed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) in November.

Under the rules, "excessively noisy or strident" advertisements would be banned, as would adverts which are noticeably louder - or have a "maximum loudness substantially higher" - than the programme they accompany.

Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8415214.stm)

This has bothered me for quite some time and I am sure others here have felt the same pain that comes with watching TV. I cannot stand how they go out of their way to dumb down the sound level of TV shows so the extra headroom can be used to pump out commercials with sometimes dramatically increased volume. According to my receivers tuner it's up to a 20dB difference sometimes - taking my TV watching from being perfectly acceptable in my house to a possible noise complaint for the nighbours.

I know, I know - anyone interested in a good home theater system has a PVR these days and I do, but it still doesn't mean you're immune to all commercials.

[[XC] gomeler]

This is all over the place. Hulu.com is victim of this, I purposely mute my speakers during the commercials due to the sound volume. I positively hate commercials because they are typically trying to sell me 1) medicine 2) non-medical health products 3) cars. I never watch TV live anymore and when I watched a football game during Thanksgiving a little bit of me died from all the terrible commercials.

[jason str]

I have heard much about this lately and its about time for a fix.

Since my Magnavox 36" tube T.V. went out that would adjust everything to the same volume level with smart sound, i really miss this feature but hopefully it will no longer be needed.

Nothing is worse than watching a good show and then being pelted with maxipad, tampon & like commercials to ruin any mood.

By the way, what happened to commercial free cable programming ?

[trekie86]

thank god, Im sick of blowing my ears out during commercials breaks. Honestly, unless you are paying for the "premium" channels, commercial free cable is dead. I was really miffed when I went from over the air to satellite only to find out that there are still commercials.

[big poppa pump]

About frickkin time! I was going nuts listening to those stupid Bowflex commercials.

[gr8golf]

I LOL when the providers and the networks claim this is an unsolvable issue due to the *many various inputters* and they haven't been able to figure out how to normalize the sound levels.

Right.

[pb300]

love when its commercial time and the 15's up front and 10's in the back come to life and blow me out of my chair. Like during the stupid at&t commercials today...