The apparent rise in amplitude is horribly annoying; but I understand that actually increasing the volume during ad-breaks is forbidden (at least in the UK). Instead, they tailor the audio spectrum to create psycho-acoustically the impression of increased loudness.
Automated ad-filtering on broadcast TV seems to be a hard problem. Some filters look for the channel logo screen at the start and end of the ad-break; but (a) you have to set up each channel; (b) "sponsors" now book slots at the start and end of the break, before and after the channel-logo screen.
The best solution I've found is to record anything I want to watch in advance; then to skip forward 5 minutes when the break starts, and FF/RW if I land in the wrong place. I'm a bit surprised that so many people seem to be buying big-screen TVs, but apparently not STBs with hard-disk recorders.
I used to have a DVR that would auto skip commercials on recorded shows but that was probably using metadata. It was annoying that it didn’t do the same live.
The apparent rise in amplitude is horribly annoying; but I understand that actually increasing the volume during ad-breaks is forbidden (at least in the UK). Instead, they tailor the audio spectrum to create psycho-acoustically the impression of increased loudness.
Automated ad-filtering on broadcast TV seems to be a hard problem. Some filters look for the channel logo screen at the start and end of the ad-break; but (a) you have to set up each channel; (b) "sponsors" now book slots at the start and end of the break, before and after the channel-logo screen.
The best solution I've found is to record anything I want to watch in advance; then to skip forward 5 minutes when the break starts, and FF/RW if I land in the wrong place. I'm a bit surprised that so many people seem to be buying big-screen TVs, but apparently not STBs with hard-disk recorders.