(01-07-2019, 06:09 PM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(01-06-2019, 11:11 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: The game yesterday between the Colts and the Texans featured some of the most maddeningly verbose and useless color commentary I can ever remember.   Word after meaningless word.   Yesterday was the worst ever.  It's like they were being paid by the word.  "You can't have penalties like that."   No [BLEEP], Sherlock.   Penalties are bad.   Shut up!  

If the color commentators cannot shut up, I would like to have the ability to selectively shut them up.   If I could just tell my TV, I don't want to hear Booger McFarland and Jason Witten, but I would still like to hear the crowd noise and the play by play, I would pay extra for that.   I know the technology exists that would enable such a wonderful feature.   Just give us a menu, "Here are the people who are going to be talking.  Check the boxes of the ones you want to silence."  

So, here's hoping that Comcast and the NFL, together, can create a feature that one can subscribe to for $10 a month, and have it shut up Booger McFarland or Troy Aikman or any of the other maddeningly verbose commentators with their meaningless comments.  

Yes, I know I can mute the whole thing, but what would be even better is if I could mute just parts of it.  I would pay extra for that.

So, I've been thinking, and I think it's completely feasible.   

One option would be for the TV network to transmit the sound in separate layers that overlap each other, with each layer having an identifying code.  The crowd would be one layer, and each announcer would be a separate layer.  That way, any layer or layers could be switched off by the user while retaining the other layers.   So the user can say, I want to hear everything except Troy Aikman.  And when Troy Aikman is talking, then instead of hearing him, you hear everything else.  Have Troy Aikman's microphone transmit his voice with an identifying code attached to it, that allows downstream technology to either allow his voice or eliminate it.  

If the TV networks don't want to do that, the TV manufacturers could use voice recognition technology, coupled with a split-second delay for processing, and eliminate one or more of the voices.  Simply write code that says, if you recognize this voice, delete that particular voice and nothing else.  

And if the TV networks don't want to do it, then a headphone manufacturer could do it.  Just like the TV manufacturer could, use voice-recognition software and eliminate a particular voice from the sound.  

How far "upstream" this technology is implemented depends of course on how much money there is to be made on it.   The farther downstream it is, the harder it is.  The easiest thing would be for the networks to do it.  

Of course the ironic thing is, the more obnoxious and tiresome the announcers get, the more money could be made selling a system to switch them off.