Ok this is just a little rant posting, nothing serious.
I've been a DVR user for 7 or 8 years now. TiVo for a long time, DirecTV HD DVR for a year now. In that time I pretty much only watched 10% or so of the commercials. Yes, I admit it, I'm one of those people that broadcast TV hates.
Recently I moved my office (I work from home) to my living room. That lets me heat less of my house in the winter and only have 1 room with "loud things" (obviously I'm a bachelor at the moment). As such I have a tendency to leave the news or something similar on in the background throughout the day. Meaning I consume many many more commercials even if I don't actively watch them.
Which leads me to my rant. Why do only SOME commercials seem to be encoding audio in stereo-only? Since I'm using a Dolby PL2 capable receiver (which would convert stereo to a 5 channel output, meaning most sound goes through the center speaker) it is obvious that this is very purposefully done since if it was a "normal" stereo encoding it would go through my center.
This is flat annoying. Stereo sound on these commercials is also significantly louder. And in my case the right stereo speaker is directly over my head. I can bypass it by -forcing- a 5 channel output, but that means the receiver isn't being allowed to adapt to the sound in the best way.
Anyway, I can only assume that they are doing this on purpose as an attention grabber. Especially since they jack the volume up so high as well on these.
The net result?
When these blaster commercials come on I tend to completely turn the system off for an hour or two so I can keep focusing on what I'm doing. Probably better for me anyway.
But surely this isn't what is intended?
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