OT TV commercials are louder than the shows

[Steve Barker]

hmmm. wouldn't know. I hit the mute button when it looks like commercial time. I refuse to watch or listen to them.

[Terry]

Some are a lot louder.

[mm]

Definitely. The stations deny this and say it is because of the sort of speech in the commercials, but I don't believe them. They say the rapid fire, continuous talking is within the limits of whatever they use for automatic volume control.

I can't use mute because I'm usually reading the paper or looking at what I'm repairing so I don't know when the show starts again and I miss part.

Froggy, or whatever that company is, Leapfrog! used to sell something to regulate volume. I think it only worked between a tuner and a separte sound system, but it doesn't matter becaues I can't find one for sale anyhow.

What I would like is like they have car seats that remember where they go for 2 different people. I'd like a tv that was easy to set a low valume and a high volume and easy to switch between the two. I wishthey would work on that instead of high resolution, or whatever it is.

[Paul MR]

When I was in school back in the Medium-Is-the-Message days, a professor liked to say, "Television is not a communications medium; it is an advertising medium."

Paul in San Francisco

[Art Todesco]

[Mark Lloyd]

I did that for awhile, mute or even switching to music.

After awhile, I started noticing that switching the audio during commercials requires WATCHING the commercials very carefully, with your finger on the button for quick response (to keep from missing the show).

Now I mute the audio just during some of the worst commercials.

[mm]

And even if this is true, they had vcrs that could tell when commercials start and end. They should LOWER the volume when commercials start, to make up for the techniques the commericial makers use to make them louder.

I'm trying to fall asleep listening to the tv and the commercials wake me up. Plus sometimes a Tada at the end or start of the movie segment. I end up turning off the tv and trying to find something decent on the radio.

[hallerb]

yeah the program providers do it intentially:(

It doesnt matter to me:) I have all digital video recorders and skip thru all the commercials, rarely watch them, hour show takes 45 minutes, and I can pause or rewind scenes of interest, like pretty gals in swimsuits:)

EVERYONE should get a DVR, you cn start watching show whiles it recording, something no VCR can ever do.

[Mark Lloyd]

You can pause it when the phone rings, or something else happens.

There's stuff in many movies you can read if you have time.

You can actually do such a thing with two VCRs, but it really takes a lot of work.

A DVR is one of those things I wanted almost 10 years before such things became available.

[Terry]

A DVR really wouldn't do it for me. I only listen to TV. I am web surfing most of the time. The only time I really notice the TV is when I have to turn it down because a commercial is blaring.

[aemeijers]

He is talking about the DVR cute trick, where if the phone rings just as your show starts, or if you get home late, you can start watching the show from the beginning, while the DVR is recording the end of it.

I'd like a DVR, but am too cheap to pay subscription fees for TIVO, or the additional ransom to the satt company that already charges too damn much. One of these days I'll set up one of the spare PCs to do it.

aem sends....

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Yabutt you can listen to what you want to listen to and when you want to listen instead of the drivel on most network shows. Modern Marvels, Planet Earth are two good reasons to record.

[mm]

Oh, I get it. That rarely happens to me. If the phone rang, I would let the machine get it. And if I got home late, I might just watch or listen to something lese and watch the whole show later. But I do see how that can be convenient.

Me too. It's not just the money. It's the notion that they come up with new things to spend money on that I never spent money on before. It's enough that there are computers and internet access.

And the subscription provides almost nothing I want. I don't want notes.

I just want to record the show and play it later. I think that follows logically from taking photos and buying records.

I did buy a digital camera today, at a community yard sale. New, 10 dollars. I can only imagine how little I got.

(Includes software CD and manual, and cord. Probably won't run on win98, though. I should have looked. :) ) The only use I have for this thing so far is to put ads on ebay, and there is only one thing I have to sell, and I copied a jpg file from a similar ad. But it was only 10 dollars, and on the surface looks as good as a 35 dollar model I saw just this January at a hamfest, although I'm probably wrong about that.

[hallerb]

yeah I said that about computers, my grandma said that about electric refrigerators, that ice box worked great. no doubt they said it about cars, heck horses are wonderful................

[Tom G]

Back in the 70's, the FCC (I believe) ruled that tv stations were required to reduce the high limit on commercials to 50% of what the program was running, due to the perception that the "fast talking or screaming" commercials were louder. We used to have the engineer at master control sitting all day with his hand on the rheostat that controlled the output. I'm sure it's all automatic, now, and thus no longer controlled. I visited a tv station recently and where we used to have 4 employees running the show, there was only one.

Tom G

[mm]

I saw one of those for sale, and I'm trying to line up someone to deliver the ice. It's not as easy as I would have thought. The one guy I found said his horse is broken and the shop can't get parts.

[Mark Lloyd]

If your digital camera uses removable media (Compact Flash, Secure Digital, etc...) it won't matter what OS you use on your computer. You just need a memory card reader.

[aspasia]

I guess you're talking just about music?

I get most of my news from the radio - NPR.

Occasionally a brief visit to one of the Pacifica stations -- mine is KPFK -- not for their shrill far-far-far-Left politics, but for their "exotic" world music.

However, even NPR throws soft-balls, and puts on many times more anti-Israel,pro-Palestinian speakers than I can stomach.

What ever happened to fact checking, instead of just reading stuff on the feed?

What NPR does have is the occasional interesting news magazine "article" about some cultural subject.

But for real news, one simply must go to the 'Net.

Or the few remaining read magazines, like the Atlantic and that grand old muckraker, Mother Jones. Now THAT mag has cojones!

[aspasia]

Oh, yeah? My old provider, whose head honchos are now in jail, was Adelphia. One of their repair guys, long ago, rigged up a custom setup that COULD record one station while watching another. Worked for years.

Thing of the past.,

The new crooks - Time Warner - won't let you do that unless you buy one of their DVRs.

[aspasia]

LOUDER THAN THE SHOWS is equally true at the movies.. The trailers are hideously loud. There's no mute button, so I (sensitive hearing) put in earplugs until the endless, endless trailers are over, and the sound reverts to normal.