An Antidote for Blaring TV Commercials

By  |  Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 9:51 am

Last Gadget Standing nominee: Gefen Auto Volume Stabilizer

Price: $299

Ever notice how TV commercials and movie trailers are decibels louder than the shows? If so, you’ll appreciate Gefen’s use of Dolby Volume Technology to level the volume on TV programs and commercials for a consistent audio experience. A simple solution for home entertainment systems, this tiny device automatically equalizes audio from different sources so everything is heard at the same audio levels. Channel surfers will appreciate the stability.  And music listeners will enjoy a consistent level of volume when enjoying random CDs.  The Auto Volume Stabilizer incorporates Dolby 5.1 digital decoding and converting to 2-channel audio. It also supports both digital (TOSlink; S/PDIF) and analog (L/R) audio formats. It will work with most popular home entertainment devices on the market, including television sets, A/V receivers, CD players, DVD players and more. Multiple audio sources can be connected at the same time, and accessed with the included IR remote or a tiny selector on the device used to switch between sources.

 
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  1. GadgetGav Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 11:50 am

    $300 to fix something that is technically illegal anyway? No thanks! Didn't I read recently that the FCC is going to start cracking down on the psycho-acoustic tricks that advertisers use to make the ads seem louder?
    Seems that separately switching audio is unnecessary for most AV receivers. Why would the audio come from a different source than the video?

  2. Gabriel Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    I think that it is going to be extremely difficult to sell this device for $300, as much as commercials tick me off. It also won't do anything about all of the extremely annoying tactics that advertisers are now using to get people to look at the screen — out of tune singing, random beeps and noises, and such.

  3. L1A Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    Easy fix is to not watch Commercials and Slave TV content thrown between it!

  4. John Says:
    October 22nd, 2010 at 4:54 am

    dumb remark, as long as the maximum deviation as defined is not exceeded the practice is NOT yet illegal…that statement is utter nonsense. moreover, since the move to digital technology the audio level control has been quite difficult. There is a standard, there are actually several of them, but those standard are NOT binding and there is NO law. All the FCC and congress brew ha ha is nothing but election year crap. They can't control this until they come up with a finite and fixed definition…and then they have to build the equipment to do it…it will take years.
    This gadget is just that, a gadget for the gullible to buy….reminds me of the stuff you see in airline magazines…99% of the time it doesn't work as advertised, is made in china and the seller has a 800% markup.

  5. BJ Says:
    November 29th, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    $30-yes, $300-no. Why is it rocket science to build one of these gadgets? I only need to decrease the volume of the commercials by a modest amount. I am willing to have the sound distorted by a modest amount. I need reasonable performance at a reasonable price. I’m certainly not going to pay for a

    (TOSlink; S/PDIF) when I have no idea how often I’ll have to water it.