LOUD commercials!

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

There's a TV in our break room that's usually tuned to either a news station or ESPN.

The TV programming itself is not annoying, but the commercials are irritating. There are in particular TWO major offenders in the loud commercial department. One is a local car dealership. Their ad practically BLARES through the entire room when it comes on to the point of being distracting. I have made a commitment to Never, EVER buy a vehicle from this dealer.

The second is a local cable company that, while not having ads that are as atrociously loud as that car dealer, still runs ads that are considerably louder than the main program.

Now a couple of years ago, a law was passed (appropriately called the CALM act) to put a stop to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerc...Mitigation_Act

According to that page, the law should have been in full effect from December 2011 onward...apparently they either aren't enforcing it or aren't enforcing it very well because there's still plenty of ridiculously loud ads on TV these days.

At least at the house I have a DVR.

[Andara Bledin]

I've noted that the worst offenders for obnoxiously loud ads are almost exclusively ads sold locally by the cable company and played in place of national commercials for select spots.

^-.-^

[bainsidhe]

Same goes for certain online viewers of TV shows, such as CBS. Occasionally they'll have a survey at the end, where they ask which ads you remember and how you rate them. Trust that I'll remember the ones that make my ears bleed, because I will ALWAYS avoid their product. And oh yes, I'll make sure to show my disgust in the survey results. Car commercials are almost always the worst offenders.

[HYHYBT]

Same goes for certain online viewers of TV shows, such as CBS. Occasionally they'll have a survey at the end, where they ask which ads you remember and how you rate them. Trust that I'll remember the ones that make my ears bleed, because I will ALWAYS avoid their product. And oh yes, I'll make sure to show my disgust in the survey results. Car commercials are almost always the worst offenders.

Careful with that. Chances are, they consider that you remember the ad at all much more important than what you thought of it.

[draco664]

Of course the ads are louder than the program. How are you going to hear them from the kitchen while you're making a cup of coffee, or from the toilet while taking a piss?

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Careful with that. Chances are, they consider that you remember the ad at all much more important than what you thought of it.

Possibly, but I've SERIOUSLY considered writing that car dealership a letter telling them I will never buy a car from them (and I'm even in the market for one right now) SPECIFICALLY because of those annoying loud commercials that they run. I doubt they would really give a crap, but it might make me feel better.

[Rageaholic]

I have a similar problem with youtube videos. Some of the videos are made so quiet that you have to turn your volume full blast to hear anything. Other videos have the opposite problem. And if you forget to turn the volume down before hearing an exceptionally loud one, you're in for a real surprise.

[crashhelmet]

I have this issue with movies. Any scene where there's a lot of dialogue, the sound is low. You either have to turn the volume up or turn on subtitles. But when there's some sort of action sequence, it's incredibly loud. If you turned up the volume for the dialogue, you're now racing to turn the volume down before you blow your speakers or go deaf

[Andara Bledin]

We run subtitles on everything because movies are all being released with theater-style sound systems in mind. It's irritating.

^-.-^

[Nekojin]

The worst offender I've ever seen, though, is Romeo Must Die. The audio is so screwed that the sound effects are deafeningly loud at the same time that the dialogue is whisper-quiet. There are some scenes where it's completely impossible to make out what's being said, because the overly-loud FX track is drowning out the overly-quiet dialogue track. It's amazing that DVD made it out of the studio.