Sneeeeezy
@rr.com
|  [TWC] Anyone notice lots of commercials cut off on Time Warner?
This may be nothing, but it always strikes me as weird, and I've seen no mention of it anywhere. I live in Deer Park and have Time Warner Cable. It is amazing the amount of Time Warner commercials we have to wade through daily, especially realizing that we are paying to watch 20+ commercials every day from the very company we are ALREADY paying to be able to watch the commercials on. But that's not my complaint. I have NEVER seen such a messed up bunch of commercial breaks than I do watching Time Warner Cable. What I mean is that many, MANY times during the day, on all different channels, you can see commercial breaks which will contain a snippet, of only a few seconds, of a cut-off commercial. I have never seen it happen even a fraction of the time on any other cable TV systems or on free network TV service. I have seen it happen possibly hundreds of times with Time Warner and can't see why somebody else hasn't noticed it and corrected it. It is like a drunk person is in charge of running the commercials during the breaks. The thing I HAVE noticed though is that, and maybe this is just because there are so many of them, it really seems to me that it just about always happens when a Time Warner commercial is included in the same break as the cut-off commercial snippet. I have really been paying attention to it lately, thinking that possibly Time Warner is playing their OWN commercials right over the legitimate commercials actually scheduled for that spot. Maybe they LEAVE the correct spot underneath and end up left with only a snippet of it, so Time Warner can legally claim that they actually DID play it, even though they actually played their OWN spot right over the proper ad spot. Also, I have NEVER seen a single Time Warner spot cut off after airing for only a few seconds. Never! Maybe companies don't actually check their ad plays very much, because these snippets happen so much I can't believe the situation keeps going on without somebody complaining about it. Anyway, if this makes any sense, I hope you can figure it out. Good luck and thanks!
Mark |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
edit:
March 6th, @01:53AM
| Re: [TWC] Anyone notice lots of commercials cut off on Time Warn
What area or city do you see this in?
The issue you see is caused by the ad-insertion system having a issues. Time Warner Cable doesn't have direct control over this, but the division or vendor (such as AdLink, Time Warner Cable Media Sales, Comcast Spotlight, Charter Media, etc.) they contract with in the specific area can be contacted. |
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videonex
join:2001-07-22 | Mac, the OP does mention being in Deer Park. I'm in Fullerton and see it come and go on various channels all the time here. I've never seen it work smoothly all the time on any cable system anywhere I've ever been. |
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CompUser
join:2001-11-07
Ada, OH | reply to Sneeeeezy
I have the same thing happen on my cable system and I'm out of Columbus, Ohio. It's annoying in the least. |
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Sneeeeezy
@rr.com
|  reply to MacLeech
Yes, I'm in Deer Park, near Blue Ash, OH. Actually, I don't really MIND the cut off commercials, it is just so weird that it goes on all the time and that Time Warner doesn't correct it. I think of them as being very professional, but it really is very sloppy to watch this happen all the time. I actually wish that ALL the commercials were cut off short, especially the Time Warner ones, but strangely, that NEVER happens. 
Mark |
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mckenna797
join:2004-08-25
Astoria, NY | I see the same thing here in NYC, also do you guys have the volume increase on the commercials |
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videonex
join:2001-07-22
| said by mckenna797  :I see the same thing here in NYC, also do you guys have the volume increase on the commercials Since you brought it up, another of my biggest technical pet peeves about cable is the refusal to put in the equipment that would keep all of the audio levels consistent from source to source and channel to channel. The biggest changes you will notice occur when a national network feed switches to a locally inserted commercial. Sometimes the level will be lower and you can't hear it and more often it seems to be twice as loud. Another local commercial in the same break might be louder or softer as well. No two sources are ever going to have exactly the same levels and that is why the automatic level equipment is needed. Cable systems set everything at an average level or set it at a maximum level when the softest source is playing and then everything else is too loud. In broadcast TV it would illegally over-modulate the transmitter. That's why you won't hear those big changes on your local stations. They have the equipment to do it.
I have offered my services to every cable system I've ever encountered with the problem and they won't take me up on it. Just give me the budget to buy what's needed and 7 days and I'll cure that system's audio problems once and for all.
It's lazy head end technicians and corporate bean counters that won't spend the money that cause the problem. It's the same lazy technicians that allow the local insertion timing to drift so bad that sometimes you lose a second or more of a network commercial or most of another one because the local cuts in real late. Then usually you miss the first few seconds of the show you're watching because it will always finish playing the local commercial before it switches back to the network feed. Professionalism in this business has been completely lost. I'd expect to be fired if I allowed such things to happen on my watch. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Will you be able to cure the audio problems from a variety of different sources without access to the baseband audio signal?
How do you propose to normalize the audio variation between:
1. an analog channel inserted at a local hub
2. a broadcast HD channel with DD 5.1 audio inserted 100 miles away on a MPEG2 stream then transported on a QAM channel created at a headend 30 miles away until it is decoded at the customer cable box
3. a MPEG2 VOD stream transported as IP until it hits a edgeQAM in the local hub
4. a cable inserted ad on a national digital SD feed
Don't get me started on the difference in audio levels on local major network that can't get the levels correct between it's national feed HD signal during a prime time show and it's local feed ad source. There's no way the cable company has any hand in the major audio level difference there and even if it's "legal" it still scares the kids... |
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MyDogHsFleas
Premium
join:2007-08-15
Austin, TX
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·AT&T Southwest
| reply to videonex
hey since you seem to know what you are talking about let me ask you a similar but different question.
More often than you'd think, I see local TV stations fail to go back to full HD mode when coming back from a local commercial break.
When this happens I always say to whoever's near, "Someone's asleep in the control room!"
What I wonder is... is this really a manual process to switch the broadcast back to HD? |
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videonex
join:2001-07-22
| reply to MacLeech
Mac, I won't go into a whole bunch of details that will confuse many here, but you know me and that I have the utmost respect for you in these forums and have taken advantage of and supported your comments many times.
The point isn't whether or not it is an easy task. It is much more difficult to accomplish today for exactly the reasons you cite, but it is still doable. It might have to be done in multiple locations to make it complete compared to even just 15 years ago when it could all be done at one local head end and baseband was available for everything.
The real culprits have been at the corporate level and the budgets needed to pull it off. I just feel that the techs in charge of these things should push harder for those budgets and make it happen. It's professional pride for me to do it right and it's not being done right as it is.
Maybe today we need the STBs to include an AGC circuit to balance everything in the digital domain in the decoding process. Philips/Magnavox has had an analog AGC audio circuit in many of their TVs for years and they help a whole bunch! Maybe more manufacturers need to take that approach. It's not impossible! |
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videonex
join:2001-07-22
| reply to MyDogHsFleas
said by MyDogHsFleas :hey since you seem to know what you are talking about let me ask you a similar but different question. More often than you'd think, I see local TV stations fail to go back to full HD mode when coming back from a local commercial break. When this happens I always say to whoever's near, "Someone's asleep in the control room!" What I wonder is... is this really a manual process to switch the broadcast back to HD? The simple answer is sometimes. With today's technology it shouldn't have to be done manually but in some situations, especially in smaller markets like Austin, it might be done manually for now as a cost cutter until more permanent equipment is installed. Being in the Los Angeles TV market, it is quite obvious to me in watching that they have the process automated and quite flawlessly too. Of course the controlling equipment that is supposed to do it automatically can fail too.
Even here in LA not all of the stations have got equal footing in their HD capabilities, even among all of the network owned stations. All are capable of passing through network feeds in HD and some can do various degrees of local HD and other's can't do any local stuff yet. I'm old enough to have watched the transition to color, there were local stations that had nothing in color when everybody else was in the 70+% color range. It takes time. |
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Sneeeeezy
@rr.com | reply to videonex
While you're fixing the VOLUME differences, could you please MUTE all the commercials with people YELLING in them? This is a definite pet peeve of mine, especially when it happens in the middle of the night.
Mark |
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JMac001
Premium
join:2006-05-20
Ridley Park, PA
 ·Comcast
| I appreciate the obviously vast knowledge about the industry here in this thread!
I am in a suburb of Philadelphia and have Comcast cable services, but the problems discussed here are common to all carriers apparently. The volume difference from shows to commercials is pretty massive at times but it is also at least as bad from network to network too. The volume level of NBC-HD is very much lower here than most other channels, particularly CBS-HD and ABC-HD which surround it, channel number-wise. (Just watch - and listen to - the first few minutes of any episode of "CSI Miami" when the theme song, "Won't Get fooled Again" by the Who, starts and try to convince me that is not an actual volume change, as some have told me!)
The Audiovox-Terk "TV Volume Regulator" supposedly helps this. Most reviews sing its praises, though some users say it doesn't work. Any knowledgeable techs I have met tell me why these devices cannot work, though to be honest I own two: Both handled the volume changes amazingly well for about two months, and then both simply stopped working. Maybe an overheating issue or something.
Which leads to a few other questions:
• Is there anyway to handle the volume problems at the end-user's location?
• Are any particular televisions or home theater equipment able to overcome the volume issues?
• Is there any difference in how this problem is commonly handled by the various types of providers, like satellite vs. cable vs. FIOS?
Appreciate any info you folks can offer.
Thanks!
Jim
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[b][i][color=#000099]J-Mac[/color][/i][/b] |
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Dude111
An Awesome Dude
Premium
join:2003-08-04
USA
edit:
April 30th, @05:27AM
|  reply to Sneeeeezy
[TWC] Anyone notice lots of commercials cut off on Time Warner?
I hate that they cant get the timing right!
The channel shows LOCAL SPAM ADS and NOT THE NETWORK ADS and you see the tail end of the network ad cause they cut back to the network TOO SOON....
Quality has just gone down the shit tubes...... (Its not TWCs fault here) |
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