Half of lemmy who have either been pirating or freebooting since the mid 90's:

Jeez, this has been going on for so long that parodies of these sorts of malicious practices are nearly a decade old. It’s about time. As usual, California has to be the voice of reason.

They are repeating the cable/broadcast ad service network playbook. All this shit has already been regulated on normal TV, and wasn't an issue with streaming because before, streaming didn't have ads like this. Now that they've normalized paying monthly fees AND being lasted with ads, the regulation has to play catch-up again. This should be something the FCC regulates, but good luck in this administration.

Okay, so I have no idea about streaming services, but commercials on broadcast TV never had the volume increased but the compression.

(I love getting lost in details so apologies if any of this comes off condescending.) Compression works by making the quieter parts louder, without distorting the louder parts.

THINK of a SENTENCE where SOME of the WORDS are LOUD and OTHER words are QUIETER.

compression works by squishing down all the loud parts, then bringing everything back up to full volume, so the previous sentence would become:

THINK OF A SENTENCE WHERE SOME OF THE WORDS ARE LOUD AND OTHER WORDS ARE QUIETER.

Now, the loud parts didn’t become louder. What happened is that the quieter parts got louder. You lose the dynamic, but gain volume. If you think it would just be exhausting, you’re correct - even at low volumes, you can get a sense of ear fatigue when audio is heavily compressed.

Now, if you want to know why movies have quiet parts where you can’t hear shit and loud parts that are way louder, this is called dynamics. Artistically, you very much want this for the same reason you want quiet parts and loud parts in classical music. If everything is constantly loud, the dramatic moments won’t feel as impactful.

“But wait, I don’t enjoy that, I like having my TV at a reasonable volume!” Yup, me too. It’s fucking annoying. Mixing is done often on high quality speakers, loud volume, so you can get every detail. Most home setups dont have that nuance, and most people don’t care. Until execs can actually get proven that they’ll make more money by having consistent compression, you’re shit out of luck. You’ll probably have to get your own compression, either through software or hardware.

Source: used to work in sound engineering.

They've been doing that since the days when TV came from an antenna.

Commercials? Laughing in Jellyfin, ahrr!

I had no idea they were turning up the volume

WHAT? adjusts my hearing aid

The first thing my wife and I did this morning when we woke up was turn on streaming shit and check to see if they actually did this...

We of course live in California and I am happy to report that the first commercial that played was loud as hell. My wife immediately started trying to find the phone numbers so that we could call and complain lol

Back in ye'old days when you paid for a streaming service and you didn't have a bunch of commercials...

When you use so much ad blocking that you didnt even realize these things had commercial breaks

I fixed that problem ages ago by just canceling all of those services...

People watch ads? Just block and pirate.

My parents forced us to mute TV commercials as a kid and I'm so thankful they did.

Not the first time that legislation was in effect.

In the TV days, they implemented a moratorium on commercials getting louder. So they turned it down? Well the decreased the overall volume and fed that through compression so it sounds louder, but isn't actually any louder.

give em time, they're reinvent the old ways

I especially hate this with music streaming services. They tryna blow out my speakers!!

If you encounter a streaming service that is still playing excessively loud ads, the right path is to file a complaint here: https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company .

This isn't even the first time they have been ordered to cut that shit out.

They even figured out a way to get around decibel laws.

Human hearing is most sensitive within a certain range where we disproportionately hear those sounds louder than other frequencies. Advertisers would boost that range up and cut frequencies elsewhere to lower the average energy in the audio wave to be compliant with advertisement decibel ratings. The perceived sound could be multiple times louder than the intended limit.

To compensate, they'll be turning it up by twice as much in all other states starting today.

I wish a federal law would pass, but we all know that’ll never happen! So, argggghhhhh

Hulu used to do it. idk if or when they stopped. But it was the primary motivator for me to buy the no-, commercial package.

(That was till I swore off and went full pirate a few years ago.)

But honesty, I never put two and two together.

They almost certainly were doing it to ramp up the unpleasantness of the commercials to push people to pay more to avoid them.

Fuckers

I sure as hell did. I'm over here trying to watch something while also being a fuckin DJ.

What is the billionaire pocket lining scheme here? There's no way the politicians that want magical gun scanning in 3d printers and illegal minecraft servers made a sensible decision

You seriously watch the commercials???

Welcome to the real world, sweet summer child. Look around. The enshittification is everywhere. Once you see it you will ne'er be happy again.