h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

3 questions really

1 dose the volume increase when the advertising break start. It always seems to
2 is this the same world wide
3 is it a deliberate policy of the commercial TV stations

Dose anyone have a cunning plan to deal with this

1. yes...
2. yes, in the UK it seems to anyhow.
3. Yes, I don't own a TV

Actually, here in the UK, I've noticed a further problem, (maybe just with some brands/makes of TV?; noticed it on models I know include supermarket cheap own brand, and a Samsung), as TVs in UK are all digital broadcasting now - there is a vast differnce in sound quality, between difernt channels, which seems to be in volume (I think its more to do with differnt compression methods/types used on differnt chanels), certainly here in the UK, all the commercial ones, the sound is just dredful, and even on the same set, going to BBC channels shows an improvement in quality (some commercial ones seem worse than others), so, skpping through channels, the volume has to be changed, constantly from one channel to the next, to keep it vaguely the same...

I found a few things, last time I was in front of a TV were painful to my hears, even at low volumes, as the sound was so harsh and clipped; far more than it was on analogue sets... and this even on a Samsung which I thought was a half-decent make (OK, its got tiny little speakers I guess, but even so, it shoudln't be that dredful a sound) then, as you said avbve, within each (commercial) channel, the sound gets even worse, and lourder, as the add breaks start... and remind me why I don't have a TV in my house

So if that is the case can someone design an auto mute device to shut down the sound on the advertising

Oughta be easy enough.... just a bit of software could do it... monitoring the volume/compression level, then applying compression to it, to reduce the volume, rather than raising it... but I think maybe the advertisers on TV might prevent TV manafacturers from doing so Hmmm.... oughta be possible to stick a hardware solution in, if your taking the TV audio out, through an external Amp to speakers... but, my solution, just not w owning a TV is by far and away the simplist solution