Don Quixote’s Thought for the Day: Sound and Fury
Don Quixote on Jan 17 2010 at 7:10 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
When I switched from cable to satellite TV a few years ago I was very pleased, except for one problem. The sound volume varied dramatically from channel to channel. Thus, I was (and am) constantly adjusting the volume when I switch channels.
At the same time, I use a nifty piece of software on the Internet called Ventrilo. This allows me to talk in real time with groups of people from all around the world. And, of course, since the people have widely varying equipment setups, they come in an very different volumes. Ventrilo allows me to adjust the volume for each person, amplifying the soft voices and quieting the loud ones. Set it once, and the system remembers to adjust for that person whenever he or she is on.
Why not do the same thing for my TV stations? The satellite box obviously has tons of memory. Why can’t it let me adjust the volume for each channel and automatically adjust accordingly every time I switch to that channel? It’s so obvious I can’t imagine why DirecTV hasn’t done it already.
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7 Responses to “Don Quixote’s Thought for the Day: Sound and Fury”
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Probably because of people defining their jobs too narrowly. Most likely, the marketing/product-management people who specified the box, and the engineers who actually designed it, thought of its function in terms of “choose a signal from among all those coming in from the satellite and amplify it in a way that accurately reproduces its characteristics.” The idea that someone might actually *want* one channel to be amplified more than another probably never crossed their minds.
Companies that sell to consumer markets generally do an absolutely terrible job of getting ideas for improvement from their existing customers…This is much less of a problem with business-to-business companies, because they typically have sales forces which are in constant touch with the customers and which have considerable organizational power to make themselves heard.
Besides…then they wouldn’t be able to make the ads loud enough so that you can hear them when you leave the room…!!
(my personal private peeve)
Mine, too, Sue. They wake me up when I’m napping in front of the TV. They’re counterproductive, because I either turn the TV off completely or promise myself not to buy the product that messed with my nap.
Sue, DQ – they’re also illegal. The FCC specifically outlawed – Jeez, decades ago! - the practice of cranking up the volume on commercials to a level above that of content. (The show is content, everything else – promos, PSA’s, station breaks, commercials – is not.)
This isn’t Direct, or Dish, or your cable provider’s, or even your rabbit-ears’ or roof antenna’s problem. It originates where the program originates.
Step 1 – call the station, register a complaint. ( This once worked reflexively, because there were once engineers on duty 24/7 at every station sitting in the control room, watching out for precisely this kind of stuff. No more – too expensive. The stations have essentially become repeaters, now it’s all automated, and as everyone has noticed, over the last few years commercial volume has been creeping relentlessly upward. You own it! Take it back! Complain!)
Step 2 – email or write the FCC directly. They’ll need to know the station, the time, the program, and the specific offense – PSA, promo, etc., etc.
The FCC once monitored this stuff routinely. They no longer do – too expensive. Janet Jackson’s chest had to be complained about in sufficient numbers for them to take notice. In the old days somebody there would have seen it as quick as you did, and would have been in touch with whoever was broadcasting the game that year before the first phone rang. Like so much else – no more…
When I’m tired, I sleep through anything. The problem in our house is that we all want to hear different things loudly. My kids crank up Wizards of Waverly Place, I turn up the volume on old musicals, and my husband really, really wants to share opera with the whole neighborhood.
Heh. I just keep my finger on the volume button when I notice it as a problem. As soon as they go to a break for an ad, I lower the volume by about 6-10 bars, depending on the level of the problem. Since the level of the volume is indicated by the number of bars, and since they are kind enough to actually number the bars, it isn’t a problem.
As for “not patronizing the advertisers”…I don’t pay any attention to them anyway. Unless they’re funny. Even then, I frequently don’t remember _who_ advertised – just the funny ad. Oh yeah…and I have a voice recognition thing – sometimes with a voice over, I visualize a face that I associate with the voice (I’m positive that Tom Selleck does the Florida oranges ad). Of course, there’s never any confirmation, but that doesn’t matter. And sometimes I _almost_ recognize a voice, but can’t quite place it. I think Earl Jones (Darth Vader) does a number of them. And whatshisname – the good Klingon – too, I think.
Simple amusement for simple people, I guess…
That would be James Earl Jones…