Roku's New Wireless Speakers Automatically Turn Loud Commercials Down, Turn Show Audio Up (arstechnica.com) 84
Roku announced today that it's getting into the audio business with the launch of its in-house Roku TV Wireless Speakers. The two HomePod-esque speakers work exclusively (and wirelessly) with Roku TVs, and feature software that will optimize audio from anything connected to the pair Roku TV, including cable boxes, antennas, and Bluetooth devices. The company also announced a new Roku Touch tabletop remote that's similar to Amazon's Alexa. Ars Technica reports: "Optimized" in this sense refers to the software-improved audio quality: automatic volume leveling will boost lower audio in quiet scenes and lower audio in loud scenes (and in booming commercials), and dialogue enhancement will improve speech intelligibility. Accompanying the Wireless Speakers is the Roku Touch remote, a unique addition to Roku's remote family. The company has a standard remote that controls its set-top boxes and smart TVs, and it also has a voice remote that processes voice commands to search for and play specific types of content. The Touch remote is most like the voice remote, but it can be used almost anywhere in your home because it's wireless and runs on batteries. It has a number of buttons on its top that can play, pause, and skip content playing from your Roku TV, and some of those buttons are customizable so you can program your favorite presets to them. There's also a press-and-hold talk button that lets you speak commands to your TV, even if you're not in front of it. Roku's Wireless Speakers and Touch remote will begin shipping this October, and the company is running a deal leading up to the release. For the first week of presales (July 16 through July 23), a bundle consisting of two Wireless Speakers, a Touch remote, and a Roku voice remote will be available for $149. From the end of that week until October, the price will be $179. When the new devices finally come out, the bundle price will be $199.
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Maybe AC made a typo and was talking about 110001001000, not you.
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Agreed. I've been calling him a cunt for a while now. Guy has issues.
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if(post != political){
prevent_anon_russian_ip_and_new_accounts_from_posting_about_trump();
}
Someone just do it already
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You canâ(TM)t code for shit
LOL
Ups and Downs (Score:2)
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Industry lobbyists insisting that Roku is invading the consumer's right to choose their own viewing material.
By offering an opt-in choice.
For now (Score:2)
For now. Once there are enough of these trinkets in the market, an upgrade will switch this around.
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I sincerely hope not. It's frustrating how much LOUDER commercials are than the actual show.
And this despite regulations prohibiting this practice: Australian Communications and Media Authority (PDF, section 1.13 on page 3) [acma.gov.au]
I understand their need for commercials; I'd rather not lose any of our free-to-air stations. But they've become so aggressive with ads that I can no longer tolerate watching television without a PVR.
At least the taxpayer funded stations display a modicum of decency around commercials. Un
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Because this president doesn't smoke cigars.
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Malware for free? You've got to be kidding, right?! :)
commercials? (Score:1)
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"Who watches TV anymore?"
Fixed that for you.
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It's the modern pop musicification of movies (Score:2)
From the roku website:
consistent volume across loud and quiet portions of movies
So much for dynamic range, isn't that what good speakers are supposed to provide?
With no messy audio cables to connect, you can have your Roku TV Wireless Speakers up and running in minutes. Just plug each speaker into a power outlet
So instead of having to connect two speaker cables, you get to connect not just one, but two power cables, oh which will require two outlets? Haha the jokes just write themselves. I bet it will soon be energy star approved as well :P
So all that money goes into components for two power supplies, two amplifiers, two remote controls, four bluetooth radios, and two microphones, what's left for the speakers?
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So much for dynamic range, isn't that what good speakers are supposed to provide?
Louder speakers or a quieter room allow for more dynamic range. Airport speakers are super loud with heaps of dynamic range. Would you consider those good speakers? Good for airports, yeah.
Dynamic range is good for music (Score:3)
Dynamic range is great for music, where you don't need (or want) to glean all the information from the work for the optimal experience. Plus, in music, a short loud burst isn't that hard on the ears.
For speech, you need a lot more of the information, so dynamic range is your enemy. It's as in photography, where a scene with a lot of dynamic range is beyond what cameras can capture. And if you turn up a movie volume enough to hear the whispered scenes, the rest of the audio will be painfully loud, and it wil
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Dynamic range is great for music, where you don't need (or want) to glean all the information from the work for the optimal experience. Plus, in music, a short loud burst isn't that hard on the ears.
For speech, you need a lot more of the information, so dynamic range is your enemy. It's as in photography, where a scene with a lot of dynamic range is beyond what cameras can capture. And if you turn up a movie volume enough to hear the whispered scenes, the rest of the audio will be painfully loud, and it will probably hurt more than a short cymbal crash of the same volume.
Exactly.
A movie is an inherently unrealistic experience, the whole point is that we get to eavesdrop on events and dialog in a completely unrealistic way.
Making the experience easier, more pleasant, and less painful sounds good to me.
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From the roku website:
consistent volume across loud and quiet portions of movies
So much for dynamic range, isn't that what good speakers are supposed to provide?
Maybe, but I would love this feature.
I hate turning it up so that I can hear whispered dialog, only to have music and explosions blast my ears off the next second.
Unrealistic? Maybe, but it's unrealistic that I could hear someone's whispered conversation in any case. (Not to mention there's scarcely a movie where this would make the top 500 unrealistic things ...)
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Agreed. A lot of movies are really imbalanced between their quiet and loud moments, and I hate fiddling with the controls to keep it reasonable. I want to hear it. I don't want to wake the kids or annoy the neighbors.
Congress and FCC are worthless. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Roku's New Wireless Speakers Automatically Turn Loud Commercials Down"
How is it that Roku managed to do something that the entire US Congress and the FCC cannot do?
Congress passed the CALM Act almost a decade ago. It was supported by every member. They put the FCC in charge of enforcement (because it's their damn job), and allowed citizens to police and report violations. And the purpose of the law could not have been any more black and white.
And yet here we are, several years later, STILL bitching about loud TV commercials and not a damn thing any lawmaker wasted their time on did anything to curb or prevent that.
Are there bigger fish to fry? Yeah. Always. Shut the hell up with that bullshit excuse already unless you're only going to allow Congress to work on "important things". If Congress can't even get something as simple as this right, then we sure as shit shouldn't entrust them with anything that's critical.
No wonder Drain the Swamp was so popular this time around.
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Major network broadcasters do a great job of managing consistent commercial/program loudness.
Non-network broadcasters, small cable channels, and OTT services do not.
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I think you will find that Congress and the FCC will want to regulate the behavior of this device in the next few weeks. There will be a "concerned" citizens group that worries the wrong programming might be affected. We can't take that kind of risk with the only information delivery mechanism some people have.
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They managed it because now the functionality is easily built in to basically all decoder/encoder firmware. Previously I know Dish had this on their set top boxes using SRS algorithms, but with the advent of MS11/MS12 that brough in dolby digital plus support basically everything, those firmwares contain auto volume leveling and compensation on a mass scale. All roku had to do was pay to enable the support, flip the bits in the settings of the firmware, and it was done
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I mean how hard would it be for providers to run an audio compressor? Set a hard limit for loudness and then some make up gain for super quiet things. I run a similar set up at home.
Re:Congress and FCC are worthless. (Score:4, Informative)
It's the compressor that's the problem. To make commercials "loud" without "being loud", they do dynamic range compression. It's the same trick they use on CDs during the loudness wars. DRC lets you push the average volume up because you reduce the difference between the loudest and quietest part, and then you just push that volume all the way to just below clipping.
TV programming has more dynamic range, so it appears quieter - if you have 20dB of dynamic range, then if you put it so the peak is at 0dB, most of the audio will be blow -10dB or lower.
I suspect the Roku devices simply capture this - it's easy to get the average volume level during playback and reduce it, especially if it's something with no dynamic range at all. Then you just reduce the volume to the average level and you're done. I've had compilation CDs that were equalized, and some songs were full dynamic range, while others were affected by the loudness wars. You can easily tell because the ones with the loudness wars were one big block on the audio graph and to avoid being too loud, they were normalized and thus were only really using half the resolution avialable because it was halved by 50%.
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Have you tried complaining? What was the process like?
Finally (Score:2)
Speakers that only work with one device? Hell yeah, welcome to the future!
Sadly I need these (Score:1)
Although these look like a ripoff, I preordered some for my Mom. She's declining and can't really manage to use our existing soundbar. She's obsessed with the newsy loop, watches it over and over again, and some of the clips are 20db louder than others.
Fix the remote (Score:3)
Buttons they could repurpose? Netflix, Sling, Hulu, and Amazon.
There. That's 3 buttons that would make my Roku experience 100% better, with no loss of quality (I don't subscribe to any of those channels, the buttons are useless).
And yeah, I have a Sony TM-VX320 universal remote. I found a Roku code (or maybe it was plex), but controlling my Roku from my universal remote makes less sense than driving a DVD in my PS3 with a PS3 remote. In other words, none at all.
As long as I can turn it off... (Score:4)
All this post processing is fine and dandy, as long as I can turn it off when I am watching a movie and want to hear it as the director indended.
Basically, think of every movie that has won an oscar in sound-related categories.
Of course, this improving dialogue and boosting volume of soft pasages will be nice for heavy dialogue material, like (melo)dramas, comedy, et al.
And also, the turning down sound of commercials is something I would pay good money for.
But for movies with no commercials (DVD, BD, Streamed), the best setting is the one that turns all this postprocessing off...
Holy counter productive... (Score:2)
And also, the turning down sound of commercials is something I would pay good money for.
This just makes me sad for us as a species.
Not because you don't like booming loud commercials - because nobody likes them. But because this is how our country works now. I can't tell what is worse in our society, Advertisers or Lawyers. Because advertisers are the ones who jack up the volume on commercials to annoying levels, it seems especially at night for some reason. It becomes annoying to the point where the only way to stop it is through legal means. Then our government has to get involved and
Mute for 28 seconds button. (Score:1)
WhatI have long wanted is a 'mute for 28 seconds' button on a remote control. It would become automatic to hit such button any time a commercial started. It would be second nature to hit it to 'refresh' at each commercial segment. And it would be low tech and easy to do. Why hasn't such a function existed for the last 25 years?
No, it will not turn commercials down (Score:1)
It will adjust all levels of all audio using probably dynamic compression and other algorithms, but nothing suggests it will detect commercials.
It seems misleading/clickbait headlines are now common on /.
I do this on Kodi (Score:2)
I set the volume amplification to -20db to compress audio, now I no longer have to deal with deafening musical crescendos or whisper-level dialog and can set my TV volume to a sane level and still hear everything fine.
Now if only I could get the same kind of setting on my podcast app of choice ( AntennaPod [antennapod.org] ) but both that and Kodi are open source so if I figure out how then I'll be able to add in the feature myself! A lot of podcasts I listen to have hosts and guests on at varying volume levels and are not
Follow the money (Score:1)
For many years, the TV manufacturers insisted that it was impossible to mute commercials, even though they were consistently louder than the program material that contained them. Of course, many people said that it was really possible but that the TV companies were afraid of what the TV sponsors would do if their commercial messages were interfered with. Now, finally, a company that does not have a vested interest in sponsor advertising has given us part of what we need. If they would allow us to complet
But can it mute the drug ads? (Score:3)
Wake me when it can auto-fast-forward through the commercials.
Sounds cool, but... (Score:2)
Pretty damn cool. No kidding, this sounds like an outstanding, great product that people have wanted all decade long.
Unfortunately, the decade that I'm talking about is the 1990s. TV commercials, seriously? It's Y2K, time to get a Tivo.
Great... (Score:2)
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