Loudness of TV Commercials

i was thinking about trying to DIY a box that normalizes the cable/sat signal. like many others, my amp has no remote and getting up to adjust the sound level every 45 seconds is a pain in the back side. anyone have any ideas how to combat this evil scheme?

Top wake you up after tha lousy program has put you to sleep.

Awakenist, you might trying Tivo. Then you can skip past the evil.

It's not just that they're louder - they are also highly compressed and limited so that the average level is almost the same as the maximum volume level. The sponsors want to be sure you hear all about male erectile disfunction while you head to the fridge for a beer during commercial break.

The NTSC TV system uses signals transmitted during the retrace interval at the end of several scan lines to signal TV stations on signal equalization and among other things, commercial cueing. I always wondered why no one built a TV that could read the cues and mute during commercials, or a video recorder that could use this info to skip commercials.

Ghostrider45,

My guess is that the brodcasters (who depend on revenue from the commecials) have better lobbiest that the consumer groups. I'm sure the broadcast industry would do everything in their power to prevent you from being able to simply skip past the commecials.

Enjoy,

TIC