Suppose you're eating barbeque chicken and that "Zoom zoom zoom" car commercial comes on? You can't press "mute" because all 10 fingers are covered with sauce! Or, what if you're in the bathroom and the one commercial that makes you nauseous starts playing exactly at that time? Wouldn't it be great if your TV knew which commericials you didn't want to listen to?
Solution: Automute. Built into TiVo and other hard-disk memory TV's, Automute would let you add a commercial to your "least favorite" list by the push of a button. Your TV would constantly compare the soundtrack being played to your "least favorites" list, and mute any undesirable transmissions.
This could also be offered as a cable TV service: For $5 a month, cable TV would obliterate commercials you specify (on their web site). I would certainly pay for it.
"Cable company, how may I help you?"
"Hi, I'd like to cancel a commercial."
"OK, sure. The 'zoom, zoom, zoom' commercial?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
"We've had a lot of requests to mute that one. It's particularly awful."
"Yeah, that's the one."
"No problem, we'll go ahead and mute that one, sir. There will be a $5 charge for this."
"OK, thank you very much."
"Thank you for calling. Have a nice day."-- phundug, Apr 27 2003 Commercial Advance feature http://www.sonicblu...atures.asp#autoskipBaked! Comes with every ReplayTV PVR model 4000 or higher. Doesn't just mute them, it skips them entirely. [krelnik, Oct 05 2004] Is it just me or is it common that the more you dislike a commercial, a song or a painting, you hate it so much that you eventually "like" it? It's like masoquism. Ok, I'll stop now before everyone thinks I'm strange.-- Pericles, Apr 27 2003 Too late. ;-)-- half, Apr 27 2003 Baked into every PVR made by ReplayTV, they call it "Commercial Advance". No extra fee required, and it skips all commercials for you. See link.-- krelnik, Apr 27 2003 The author is taking about specifying certain commercials (not all) to be muted (not skipped). I don't believe the PVRs do that. They probably could, though.-- waugsqueke, Apr 27 2003 Yes, because as annoying as these ads are to listen to, they're so goddamn great to watch.-- snarfyguy, Apr 27 2003 This is badly needed and I nearly posted a similar idea:
A lot of thriller/horror movie directors build suspense by keeping the volume low (people speaking in whispers etc.) Then when the audience has cranked up the volume control or is straining to listen, the director hits you with a loud <<_SHOCK!!!_>> that makes you jump out of your seat.
The problem is if you have the TV turned down so low that the neighbors won't be disturbed by the shocks, you can't follow the conversation.
I need a auto-mute that limits loudness (without clipping) to a certain level. The device would set attenuation based on the past 3 mins max volume level.-- FloridaManatee, Apr 28 2003 FM, that’s a compressor (in the music world).-- Shz, Apr 28 2003 Cool. I'll go look for one.
One thing I love about the Bakery is finding stuff I've always wanted but never seen baked.-- FloridaManatee, Apr 28 2003 You could probably mute most (but not all) commercials by detecting the disappearance of closed-captioning information, I bet. Of course, then there would be whole programs whose audio would be muted if you left that feature on...-- land, Oct 27 2005 [Shz], I tried one of those compressors. Worked a treat. Couldn't hear a damn thing over the noise.-- egbert, Aug 01 2008 I baked this for Spotify on Android in a few minutes before I went to bed yesterday morning. My version currently mutes all ads, but could be modified to only mute ads for specific companies/brands/products. (I was using a tablet, but had recently updated the Spotify app, and it seems the new version no longer doesn't play ads most of the time on tablets, and I wanted to sleep with music on but didn't want to be woken up by noisy ads.)
I used the Android automation app E-Robot, in which I created two commands. The first is triggered by Spotify posting a notification, and it has a condition that the notification's ticker text ends with " – " (space, en dash, space), which signifies an ad. It turns on system muting. The second command has the same trigger, but the condition is that the ticker text doesn't end with that substring (because that substring is followed by the artist name). It turns off muting.
This works perfectly, and even works such than if I decide I want to hear a specific ad, I can manually unmute it, and it'll automatically turn muting back on for the next ad.
Premade apps to mute Spotify ads are also baked; just do a Google search for 'spotify mute ads'.-- notexactly, May 12 2016 random, halfbakery