I watch GMA every morning. It is on from 7-9 here. I turn it on at 8 and often have to watch it live by 9. I ff through commercials, weather, and the 'we're going to tell you what we're going to tell you' segments. . . and Nancy Grace.
Jim
Oh good. I'm not the only one who has a problem with that. I actually stopped watching most current TV programming specifically because the annoying "background music" is in fact foreground noise that completely mask just about ALL conversation between the actors. It's really bad when they run the bass for dramatic effect. Too bad that all that dramatic effect eliminates the ability to follow the story,
Per Bob F:
Likewise SageTV got bought out by Google and isn't selling any more licenses or hardware.
I know a few people who swear by MythTV. Tried it myself for awhile, but ran afoul of Linux and SQL Anywhere's security settings. But others say they can't imagine what I'm talking about... so go figure.
I also have heard from a few who use Microsoft Media Center and are reasonably satisfied with it. I think Microsoft Media Center is pre-packaged with at least one of the versions of Windows 7.
Yes, the law was passed about two years ago, became effective a year ago, and gave them a year to do it. I've been eagerly looking forward to this. I'm tired of adjusting the volume, even in the bedroom where I put in a wired volume control with a knob (a lot easier to use than the remote. I use an add-on speaker with better sound than the built-in speaker.)
For years I haven't been able to fall asleep to the tv because the commercials were so loud, and sometimes the radio has nothing on it.
Yes, but I have heard that the commercials are louder in one's ear because of style of speech they use, so they seem louder, but they're not electronically louder. OTOH, that's not what I heard when this law was passed. I think they were already supposed to limit the volume of commercials and the news said that they made it the same as the last minute, or 45 seconds of the tv show that was playing, and now they were going to have to make the commercials the same volume as the last 10, 15, ???, maybe minutes of the show. I guess the shows cooperated by increasing their volume for the last minute. All of this implies the volume is louder electronically and what I started this paragraph with isn't true.
I hope someone in this thread explains it.
Yes I do that. And I often watch the recording while I'm recording it. I tune in 5 or 10 minutes after the timer starts the recording, but play the recording from the beginning. Then I can FF forward through the commercials. I usually replay a couple minutes of each show so that puts me further behind, so more room to FF.
I sort of doubt it.
My friend says there even louder than TV commercials, but it's only been a day and she hasn't said if they've changed.
If I used Mute, I'd forget to turn the sound on when the show started again. I usually read the newspaper or work on the computer while I'm watching tv, so I won't know when the show restrarts.
But I pretty much timer-record everything I watch, so I can watch it when I want to.
Sometimes I wonder if FFing through the commercials, digitally, has any effect on me. I don't buy most of the things they advertise.
I've read that alt hough people like funny commercials, they're not good at seling the product.
I don't know if it relates to compression, but I have the same problem. I especially notice it on Law & Order, which is NBC,. and there have been other shows too on occasion.
It also doesn't help that I record 90% of what I watch on a DVDR with hard drive, and I use the most space-saving method, SLP I think, so replay is surely worse than live. Sometimes whole syllables are missing.
That's exactly my reaction to what Jim said. I went to an ear doctor this year, at age 65, for the first time in my life (unless they tested us in grammar school), and a pretty girl played tones in my ears, and they said I have some hearing loss, but the biggest problem is with the background music, and you two make me think that's the tv-show's fault and not mine.
I lalso find I can understand men better than women on the radio, especailly the BBC, where the hosts have British accents and t he guests are sometimes from India, Kenya, South Africa etc. and are even harder to understand. .
I think Lqw & Order didnt' do this when it started 20 years ago, and may have stopped. I noticed it most 4 to 2 years ago. I'll pay more attention.
What was amazing to me is that if you didn't buy it with XP, if you'd never even heard of it (as was the case with me), you couldn't get it as an add-on later, even for money.
Is it still t hat way with Win 7?
It's not just very lately. I'm sure that was going on more than 2 years ago. We all watch different shows in different cities and are exposed to different commercials. But I haven't seen one with the slience for at least a year.
I didnt think the new law was based on averages within the commercial, only the average volvume of the tv show it self before the commerical. But I could be wrong.
I also havent' read the mother jones article yet. I plan to.
It has to do with "Dynamic range compression" for the audio. Here's a link to a site that can explain it in detail. The section on TV ads is down the page so you'll have to scroll down to "Marketing". ^_^
Per micky:
The flip side of that seems tb that obnoxious commercials can sell.
The story I heard is that the makers killed that commercial where the kid whines "More park sausages mom..." because so many people found it offensive - and sales went down.
Per micky:
I built a couple of XP-based servers by installing from the Microsoft Developer Network DVDs but it was a real hassle and I got the impression that the XP-based product was intended for turnkey systems where it's all pre-installed and not for after-the-fact installation by end users.
What turned me away from it was the flip side of being simple to use: it was so dumbed-down that the UI made me crazy. Not nearly enough information on a screen, for starters: too much time spent drilling down and scrolling.
But I see myself as being on the lunatic fringe consumer-satisfaction-wise (and maybe otherwise...).
My impression is that a lot of reasonable people use it and like it - and that there are add-ons that mitigate the dumbed-down aspect.
No direct experience, but my impression from reading other people's posts is that it's built-in and ready to go: just hook up some tuners and configure it.
Maybe somebody with experience can comment.
What's offfensive about it!!!!?
That he whines? That he's asking his mom, not his dad, for lunch?
OMG, if you heard it you'd cringe. The obnoxious sounding kid would grate on your nerves. IIRC, they later added "please" at the end so he sounded less demanding.
I had their scrapple once and it sucks.
Per micky:
I think it had tb heard tb appreciated.
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