[snakeboy]

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

[KeplerBoy]

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

[VBprogrammer]

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out?

It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them.

It's doubtful that any of these netflix series you could catch one random episode and feel comfortable that you understand what's going on. Perhaps worse is the recent trend for mini-series which are almost exactly how you describe - just a film without half of it being left on the cutting room floor.

[sfn42]

As opposed to the House model where every episode is exactly the same with some superficial differences?

I like the long movie format, lots of good shows to watch. Movies feel too short to properly tell a story. It's just like a few highlights hastily shown and then it's over.

[vjk800]

I'm fine with this. I always wished regular movies were much longer. I wish lord of the rings movies included all the songs and poems and characters from the book and lasted like 7 hours each.

[bayarearefugee]

Even as an older person, I prefer the new format, with the exception of the now common 2-3 year gaps between seasons.

That part of it, while I know the reasons given for it, is becoming increasingly annoying/frustrating.

[dotancohen]

We used to call that a soap opera. Maybe today we should call it a couch opera.

[XorNot]

Honestly what I don't get is how this even happened though: it's been I think 10 years with no progress on getting the volume of things to equal out, even with all the fancy software we have. Like I would've thought that 5.1 should be relatively easy to normalize, since the center speech channel is a big obvious "the audience _really_ needs to hear this" channel that should be easy to amplify up in any downmix....instead watching anything is still just riding the damn volume button.

[pentaphobe]

Yeah it's wild - not only not improving but seemingly getting worse

doesn't seem like anyone outside the audience thinks it's a serious problem (?)

[account42]

With mpv you can use ffmpeg's dynaudnorm filter to fix this.

[sfn42]

I toyed with the idea of making some kind of app for this but while it may work on desktop it seems less viable for smart tvs which is what I primarily use.

Though I have switched to mostly using Plex, so maybe I could look into doing something there.

[Eisenstein]

Map the front speaker outputs to the side speakers and the problem will be mitigated. I have been using this setup for about 2 years and it lets me actually hear dialog.

[wombatpm]

Thankfully the ad supported streaming brings occasionally brings you back to a proper sound mix and volume level.

[pentaphobe]

There's been a lot of speculation/rationalisation around this already, but one I've not seen mentioned is the possibility of it being at least a little down to a kind of "don't look back" collective arrogance (in addition to real technical challenges)

(This may also apply to the "everything's too dark" issue which gets attributed to HDR vs. SDR)

Up until fairly recently both of these professions were pretty small, tight-knit, and learnt (at least partially) from previous generations in a kind of apprentice capacity

Now we have vocational schools - which likely do a great job surfacing a bunch of stuff which was obscure, but miss some of the historical learning and "tricks of the trade"

You come out with a bunch of skills but less experience, and then are thrust into the machine and have to churn out work (often with no senior mentorship)

So you get the meme version of the craft: hone the skills of maximising loudness, impact, ear candy.. flashy stuff without substance

...and a massive overuse of the Wilhelm Scream :) [^1]

[^1]: once an in joke for sound people, and kind of a game to obscure its presence. Now it's common knowledge and used everywhere, a wink to the audience rather than a secret wink to other engineers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream

EDIT: egads, typing on a phone makes it far too easy to accidentally write a wall of text - sorry!

[epolanski]

> This may also apply to the "everything's too dark" issue which gets attributed to HDR vs. SDR

You reminded me of so many tv shows and movies that force me to lower all the roller shutters in my living room and I've got a very good tv otherwise I just don't see anything on the screen.

And this is really age-of-content dependent with recent one set in dark environments being borderline impossible to enjoy without being in a very dark room.

[m3047]

"everything's too dark": it could be temporizing or parallel construction, but my understanding is that "everything's too dark" originates from trying to optimize the color map to show off some detail that we obviously don't care about.

[tor825gl]

Have you got older recently?

[Tempest1981]

Or fear of turning up the volume due to children sleeping nearby. Dynamic range seems higher "these days".

[account42]

Why gaslight people like this?

[tensor]

Easy, you and all your friends are getting old.

[account42]

Stop gaslighting people.

[estimator7292]

It hasn't. We've been having these same problems for decades. There was a while scandal about cable TV channels winding down the volume of shows so ads could play even louder.

[macNchz]

I remember this being a problem when we first bought a DVD player in like 1999.

[mbreese]

I think a good chunk of it has to do with the TVs themselves. I don't have any extra sound system attached to my TV, so I'm working with whatever sound comes out of the TV itself. As TVs get thinner, speakers also get smaller, and focused downwards. So we're using tiny speakers that are pointed indirectly towards me.

I could probably fix over half of the problems I have with TV audio with a decent sound bar, and a good one is a decent percentage of the cost of a brand new TV.

[JumpCrisscross]

> think a good chunk of it has to do with the TVs themselves

I have a thin TV. I have to turn on subtitles for modern films. For older movies from the same streaming service, however, I can understand everything fine.

[typeofhuman]

Netflix records many shows simultaneously in the same building. This is why their shows are all so dark - to prevent light bleeding across sets. I wonder if this is also true for keeping the volume down.

[typeofhuman]

Why the downvotes, HN?