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I am always amazed, amongst the shrinking group of people who still watch broadcast TV, how many of them don't reflexively hit Mute when the ads come on. I've

I am always amazed, amongst the shrinking group of people who still watch broadcast TV, how many of them don't reflexively hit Mute when the ads come on. I've done it my entire life.

emodendroket 5y ago
How will I know the game's back on if I do that?
- gumby 5y ago
  As long as you don’t check your phone you could use a TiVo-ish delay, so you could just jump over the ads and continue
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Given how many ads there are that'd have to be a pretty substantial delay
spullara 5y ago
Most of the people still watching broadcast TV are older than people that have had a mute button their entire life.
prawn 5y ago
Went around to friends’ place for dinner the other month and they had TV news and ads blaring in the background the entire time, no one paying attention. I can’t stand TV or radio ads and it was like chalkboard fingernails all evening.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  When you are not exposed to ads constantly it become clear just how obnoxious they are. I think advertisers have been dialing up the attention grabbing features over the years, and those constantly exposed don’t notice. Those who haven’t been watching now experience being exposed to the equivalent of ten babies crying for your attention. It’s truly and attack on your senses and sanity, but you have to remove yourself from it for a time to see how bad it is.
hetspookjee 5y ago
Id dream of a raspberry pie plugin that has a mic & IR transmitter that just listens to ads or any semblance of it and just hits mute the moment the confidence interval goes beyond 90% based on the rise in ampltitude. False positives would be straining though, and finding the moment to un-mute is also a bit difficult perhaps. But given that all ads have their loudness dialed up to 11 in relation to the actual program, it might be easy enough to just listen to a large drop in amplitude across the frequency spectrum to hit un-mute. This can be completely off-the-grid with incidental updates if so desired. Could even put some federated learning into the bag for a slight dystopian flavour - and that sweet VC allure - to also listen to people hitting mute & unmute as a semi-reliable labelling feature. Just sample the time window recording of the frequency spectrum and it may be good enough already. It wouldn't be foolproof but just good enough I guess. I'd be willing to pay 200$ for a ad silencing IR transmitter with >90% recall.
- jaycar 5y ago
  you should fork sponsorblock.
- stonogo 5y ago
  Have at it: https://circuitcellar.com/research-design-hub/projects/build-a-tv-commercial-killer/ https://circuitcellar.com/research-design-hub/projects/build... The device you would pay $200 for used to cost $40: https://bgr.com/general/mute-tv-commercials-automatically-how-to/ https://bgr.com/general/mute-tv-commercials-automatically-ho...
- squarefoot 5y ago
  AI could come to help: a powerful enough dedicated hardware could decode HDMI signals, match the audio/video with the known fingerprint of an ad, substitute it with say a tropical beach or some mountains with a soft jazz music background and a small countdown in a corner "ads end in: mm:ss", then resume the program at the predicted end. The fingerprint would be taken by the users by pushing a button to mark each spot start and end so that the AI can recognize it and upload to a central server that would aggregate all data. The system should have a buffer long enough to allow watchers to rewind to the exact start and end of the spot, and to allow the AI to analyze the data before showing it to the watchers, however a very long buffer could be even more handy to wait for the entire program to end, then process it so that every ad is removed and the program joined back together with no interruptions. Doable? Yes, but would need a lot of work and some money for the hardware. Probably also overkill since pretty much all programs are already available ads free on decentralized torrent swarms.
jonathankoren 5y ago
I find it weird and disturbing that my kids pay more attention to commercials — not even kid commercials — than the actual show.
- gumby 5y ago
  Back when I used to travel for business I would watch the tv sometimes in the hotel. I just watched the ads, because they had the high production value. While a 30-minute (really 22 minutes) show might cost $3MM an episode, a 30 second ad could easily cost a million to make. And in that 30 seconds was a perfect short story: a crisis, a bit of character development, then a resolution and a denouement. I could watch a bunch of them, usually about products I’d never seen before, and skip the crappy show.
chaircher 5y ago
My grandad used to do this! I thought he was the only one. My mother had a really obnoxious attitude towards the television. Probably because of this I don't have a TV at all and am always suprised by the amount of people who immediately notice when they visit my house.
meheleventyone 5y ago
90% of active ad watching in the US is probably from tourists watching with morbid fascination. I know it’s one of the things I do when bored in a hotel room.
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  I'm so glad this isn't just me. I especially enjoy the disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical ads.
  - Lev1a 5y ago
    I wonder if it's the same as in German pharma ads, which end with a grey screen with the following text in white font: "Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen fragen Sie Ihren Arzt oder Apotheker." which translates to: "Concerning risks and side effects please ask your doctor or pharmacist."
    - cookie_monsta 5y ago
      Oh, no these things are hilarious. They actually name all the possible individual side effects (some of which sound much worse than the original condition) but it's done in a voiceover that's played at like 2x the original speed.
      - Lev1a 5y ago
        Oh wow, that's really just unnecessary.
        lolinder 5y ago
        It's basically the same as cookie banners: regulators said they had to, so they comply in the most obnoxious and least helpful way possible.
        rolph 5y ago
ako 5y ago
Never done the mute thing, but would record everything with a humax recorder, and just start viewing late. This way you can just skip the ads completely. Unfortunately this doesn’t work with tv apps on the Apple TV. So mostly stopped watching tv. Ads completely ruin tv watching.
thanatos519 5y ago
I had no broadcast TV for 25 years until a few years ago. Whenever I encountered TV watchers, I was also amazed that they didn't mute ads, but I still found the interruption extremely irritating. Now, here in The Netherlands with my KPN TV-over-fiber connection, I can skip around in a show, but I can't skip over ads on many channels. The device sometimes doesn't even let me mute during an ad! I can independently mute or switch video inputs, so it's basically forcing me to either hear or see an ad. I pay about the same for Netflix. So obnoxious.
oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
How do you know when the ads are finished so you can unmute?
- Lev1a 5y ago
  Sometimes the ads are interrupted by a TV show or a movie.
  - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    Which means you either need to pay active attention to the muted ads—something that sounds worse than having them on in the background, imo—or you run a risk of missing part of whatever film/tv show you're watching—again, I'd rather just make the sacrifice of having the ads on and not paying attention to them.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I mute ads too. I don't understand why anyone would actually want to listen to this noise.
waynesonfire 5y ago
how about the dentist office, playing a traditional over-the-air radio station featuring your favorite Sting song and an ad for car audio system, instead of an ad-free streaming service. Called out my dentist on this and he listened.
adrianmonk 5y ago
I haven't done it my entire life. When I was a kid, TVs didn't have mute buttons or remote controls. Therefore, I got very good at mentally tuning ads out. I can watch an ad 100 times yet not be able to tell you what they said, what happened in it, or what product it's for. Sometimes I mute now, but only when the ad is top 10% annoying. It's often easier to just tune out the ads than to remember to unmute.
- earthboundkid 5y ago
  I think to be a mute-ant you had to come of age in the 80s/90s after the remote and cable but before DVR and steaming. My wife didn’t have cable so can’t mute to save her life.

I am always amazed, amongst the shrinking group of people who still watch broadcast TV, how many of them don't reflexively hit Mute when the ads come on. I've done it my entire life.

emodendroket 5y ago

How will I know the game's back on if I do that?

gumby 5y ago
As long as you don’t check your phone you could use a TiVo-ish delay, so you could just jump over the ads and continue
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Given how many ads there are that'd have to be a pretty substantial delay

spullara 5y ago

Most of the people still watching broadcast TV are older than people that have had a mute button their entire life.

prawn 5y ago

Went around to friends’ place for dinner the other month and they had TV news and ads blaring in the background the entire time, no one paying attention. I can’t stand TV or radio ads and it was like chalkboard fingernails all evening.

mrweasel 5y ago
When you are not exposed to ads constantly it become clear just how obnoxious they are. I think advertisers have been dialing up the attention grabbing features over the years, and those constantly exposed don’t notice. Those who haven’t been watching now experience being exposed to the equivalent of ten babies crying for your attention. It’s truly and attack on your senses and sanity, but you have to remove yourself from it for a time to see how bad it is.

hetspookjee 5y ago

Id dream of a raspberry pie plugin that has a mic & IR transmitter that just listens to ads or any semblance of it and just hits mute the moment the confidence interval goes beyond 90% based on the rise in ampltitude. False positives would be straining though, and finding the moment to un-mute is also a bit difficult perhaps. But given that all ads have their loudness dialed up to 11 in relation to the actual program, it might be easy enough to just listen to a large drop in amplitude across the frequency spectrum to hit un-mute. This can be completely off-the-grid with incidental updates if so desired. Could even put some federated learning into the bag for a slight dystopian flavour - and that sweet VC allure - to also listen to people hitting mute & unmute as a semi-reliable labelling feature. Just sample the time window recording of the frequency spectrum and it may be good enough already. It wouldn't be foolproof but just good enough I guess. I'd be willing to pay 200$ for a ad silencing IR transmitter with >90% recall.

jaycar 5y ago
you should fork sponsorblock.
stonogo 5y ago
Have at it: https://circuitcellar.com/research-design-hub/projects/build-a-tv-commercial-killer/ https://circuitcellar.com/research-design-hub/projects/build... The device you would pay $200 for used to cost $40: https://bgr.com/general/mute-tv-commercials-automatically-how-to/ https://bgr.com/general/mute-tv-commercials-automatically-ho...
squarefoot 5y ago
AI could come to help: a powerful enough dedicated hardware could decode HDMI signals, match the audio/video with the known fingerprint of an ad, substitute it with say a tropical beach or some mountains with a soft jazz music background and a small countdown in a corner "ads end in: mm:ss", then resume the program at the predicted end. The fingerprint would be taken by the users by pushing a button to mark each spot start and end so that the AI can recognize it and upload to a central server that would aggregate all data. The system should have a buffer long enough to allow watchers to rewind to the exact start and end of the spot, and to allow the AI to analyze the data before showing it to the watchers, however a very long buffer could be even more handy to wait for the entire program to end, then process it so that every ad is removed and the program joined back together with no interruptions. Doable? Yes, but would need a lot of work and some money for the hardware. Probably also overkill since pretty much all programs are already available ads free on decentralized torrent swarms.

jonathankoren 5y ago

I find it weird and disturbing that my kids pay more attention to commercials — not even kid commercials — than the actual show.

gumby 5y ago
Back when I used to travel for business I would watch the tv sometimes in the hotel. I just watched the ads, because they had the high production value. While a 30-minute (really 22 minutes) show might cost $3MM an episode, a 30 second ad could easily cost a million to make. And in that 30 seconds was a perfect short story: a crisis, a bit of character development, then a resolution and a denouement. I could watch a bunch of them, usually about products I’d never seen before, and skip the crappy show.

chaircher 5y ago

My grandad used to do this! I thought he was the only one. My mother had a really obnoxious attitude towards the television. Probably because of this I don't have a TV at all and am always suprised by the amount of people who immediately notice when they visit my house.

meheleventyone 5y ago

90% of active ad watching in the US is probably from tourists watching with morbid fascination. I know it’s one of the things I do when bored in a hotel room.

cookie_monsta 5y ago
I'm so glad this isn't just me. I especially enjoy the disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical ads.
- Lev1a 5y ago
  I wonder if it's the same as in German pharma ads, which end with a grey screen with the following text in white font: "Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen fragen Sie Ihren Arzt oder Apotheker." which translates to: "Concerning risks and side effects please ask your doctor or pharmacist."
  - cookie_monsta 5y ago
    Oh, no these things are hilarious. They actually name all the possible individual side effects (some of which sound much worse than the original condition) but it's done in a voiceover that's played at like 2x the original speed.
    - Lev1a 5y ago
      Oh wow, that's really just unnecessary.
      - lolinder 5y ago
        It's basically the same as cookie banners: regulators said they had to, so they comply in the most obnoxious and least helpful way possible.
        rolph 5y ago

ako 5y ago

Never done the mute thing, but would record everything with a humax recorder, and just start viewing late. This way you can just skip the ads completely. Unfortunately this doesn’t work with tv apps on the Apple TV. So mostly stopped watching tv. Ads completely ruin tv watching.

thanatos519 5y ago

I had no broadcast TV for 25 years until a few years ago. Whenever I encountered TV watchers, I was also amazed that they didn't mute ads, but I still found the interruption extremely irritating. Now, here in The Netherlands with my KPN TV-over-fiber connection, I can skip around in a show, but I can't skip over ads on many channels. The device sometimes doesn't even let me mute during an ad! I can independently mute or switch video inputs, so it's basically forcing me to either hear or see an ad. I pay about the same for Netflix. So obnoxious.

oneeyedpigeon 5y ago

How do you know when the ads are finished so you can unmute?

Lev1a 5y ago
Sometimes the ads are interrupted by a TV show or a movie.
- oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
  Which means you either need to pay active attention to the muted ads—something that sounds worse than having them on in the background, imo—or you run a risk of missing part of whatever film/tv show you're watching—again, I'd rather just make the sacrifice of having the ads on and not paying attention to them.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

I mute ads too. I don't understand why anyone would actually want to listen to this noise.

waynesonfire 5y ago

how about the dentist office, playing a traditional over-the-air radio station featuring your favorite Sting song and an ad for car audio system, instead of an ad-free streaming service. Called out my dentist on this and he listened.

adrianmonk 5y ago

I haven't done it my entire life. When I was a kid, TVs didn't have mute buttons or remote controls. Therefore, I got very good at mentally tuning ads out. I can watch an ad 100 times yet not be able to tell you what they said, what happened in it, or what product it's for. Sometimes I mute now, but only when the ad is top 10% annoying. It's often easier to just tune out the ads than to remember to unmute.

earthboundkid 5y ago
I think to be a mute-ant you had to come of age in the 80s/90s after the remote and cable but before DVR and steaming. My wife didn’t have cable so can’t mute to save her life.