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Tired of loud commercials (1 Viewer)

stymie222

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Hope someone else is as fed up with loud, blaring, annoying commercials as I am. I'm a Direct TV subsciber.

Are there any new gadgets out there that will either keep a constant volume, or mute automatically ?

I am so sick of constantly having the remote in my hand to combat this.

I wrote to the FCC and got a lame excuse why they don't do anything about anything.
 

Malcolm R

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Don't most current televisions have some sort of automatic volume equalizer setting? Check your television's audio menu settings.
 

Sam Favate

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It's a US thing. I believe there are rules in some other countries that commercials have to be broadcast at the same volume as programming. But here, advertising gets to be shoved down our throats, and into our ears.
 

Radioman970

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One of the TOP annoying things about commerical TV. This isn't quite as bad as the promos over the programs since many TVs have settings you can adjust to stop it. Shame there isn't something you can use to remove those promos....perhaps one day....
 

xfile94

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I have hated commercials for years! I just mute all the ads because they are so loud, as you said.
 

ScottH

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What are commercials? Doesn't everyone have a DVR by now?
 

Ralphie_B

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It's really irritating to me, too. And since I have a front projection system, all my audio runs through my A/V receiver. I like to keep dynamic range compression turned off for movies. I wouldn't mind having it on for TV, to try and smooth out the peaks from commercials. But since the setting is tied to my receiver (not to my HDTV tuner), there's no clear way to turn it on for TV, off for movies... short of remembering to do it manually each time.

Edit: wait a sec... I wonder if I can program my Harmony remote to do this as part of my "Watch HDTV" and "Watch a DVD" activities...
 

Eric Peterson

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That's a good idea. I'm going to have to investigate this myself.

This absolutely drives me nuts. Especially when I'm drifting off late at night, only to be kicked in the face by commercials that are nearly twice the volume of the program that I happen to have on. It's absolutely maddening. If it wasn't for TCM, I would probably drop my cable subscription all together.
 

Ockeghem

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With the exception of during the Super Bowl, I haven't listened to or watched commercials for around fifteen years. I love the mute button. :emoji_thumbsup:
 

Aaron Silverman

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It's likely the ads are recorded at a very high level (like CDs :frowning: ) and the broadcasters are just playing dumb.
 

DaveF

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In my receiver, TV audio goes to Video1 and DVD goes to DVD, and the receiver has different audio settings for each of the inputs. So if you have your different sources connected to different receiver inputs, you may be able to set TV for compressed audio and DVD to be normal.

Or, if the TV audio comes via your actual TV set, the TV might have an equalizer that would then have no effect on DVDs.
 

Stan

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I think people have complained about this for years and nothing ever changes.

I'd guess I record 95% of what I watch and mute the ads on the other 5%.

Fast forward through commercials, most opening/ending credits and particularly those annoying "coming up next" blurbs before the commercial showing you previews of the next ten minutes you'll see after the commercial.

You can easily drop almost a third off the viewing time for most shows just by bypassing the crap.

After volume and quantity, I'd also have to rank frequency next on the annoying list.

Recorded both parts of "The Andromeda Strain" last week to watch in one sitting. Part I started with 20-22 minutes of programming followed by commercials. By the time it got to that last half hour or so, it was down to six minutes of programming, four minutes of commercials, repeat until done. By that point they figure they've got you hooked on the story, so why not up the commercial time to 40%.

I know a lot of shows use this technique, but don't ever recall having seen it so obnoxious as the 60/40 ratio.
 

Ockeghem

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Whenever I record a show or film off of the television for keeping, I do one of two things. I either 1) watch it then, and cut out the commercials as I am watching the film (gotta love the Rec Pause button); or 2) I record the film at SP on one VCR and then tape it from that VCR to another, cutting out the commercials at that point. Either way, they're gone. :emoji_thumbsup:
 

Kevin Hewell

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I still have a VCR. Two, actually. I don't have a problem with DVRs, but, I like having movable media. If I want to take something that I recorded over to a friend's house, I can't do that with DVR.
 

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