Audio technology specialist SRS Labs announced that its "TruVolume" technology, which aims to solve television loudness problems by normalizing the volume between programs and commercials or when switching channels, is now deployed in 30 million consumer electronic devices.
The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company, which competes with Dolby Laboratories in providing loudness solutions that work at the TV-set level, says that over 3,500 models use TruVolume, including HDTV sets from Vizio and Samsung. SRS also announced a deal with pay-TV operator Dish Network at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month to integrate TruVolume into Dish set-top boxes.
Loudness in digital television programming has been an ongoing issue for consumers, and Congress is currently considering legislation that would enforce certain technical parameters for broadcasters to help solve the problem. The U.S. digital TV standards body, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, has released a set of guidelines for programmers and pay-TV operators to follow to avoid loudness problems, and a host of professional equipment vendors now offer loudness monitoring and normalization products.
TruVolume and Dolby Volume, the competing product from Dolby used in Toshiba HDTV sets, both aim to address the loudness problems directly in the living room by integrating sophisticated audio processing technology into the TV sets. SRS also markets an external adaptor product, MyVolume, for older sets that don't include the technology.
"With TruVolume, there are no extra settings to configure or extra efforts needed to navigate through cumbersome menus just to make sure the feature works correctly," said SRS Labs VP of marketing Allen Gharapetian in a statement. "No matter the device, when TruVolume is turned on, all of those pesky volume fluctuations associated with watching TV are eliminated immediately."
