Original Tardis Material

[infinitemonkeys]

My icon expresses how keen I am to watch next week's installment.

It's entirely possible that I am far too easy for River Song but I loved that. Loooooved it. My inner ten-year-old is petrified every time there is some movement in my peripheral vision or a mote swimming across my eyeball. There are, as ever, caveats... but IS IT NEXT WEEK YET?

Comments

[infinitemonkeys]

You got that too? I have a new but second-hand TV, and sort of assumed that the previous owner -- a techy friend who updates his TV every year -- had switched the settings to some sort of dynamic sound nonsense that only works when you also buy expensive speakers.

It seemed fine when I watched it on iPlayer to see the subtitles. Perhaps the sound is being designed so it works well when played on those super-smart TVs with the dynamic sound settings and when compressed down on iPlayer but not for anything in between.

[cofax7]

I would second this, because the .avi file I watched had no sound problems: I was able to follow everyone just fine.

[muridae_x]

I've wondered for a while if they're making the assumption that everyone nowadays is watching on an HD ready TV with 5.1 surround sound, and are optimising the sound track accordingly.

I actually do have surround sound and it mostly sounds fine* when I'm sitting at the optimum point between the speakers, but if I don't bother to switch it on and settle for the TV's own stereo output the music completely drowns out the dialogue.

It's also fine if I watch via iPlayer on my PC with my crappy 15 year old speakers, so they likely do encode that with a different audio mix.

* Though the music generally is too loud, and really could do with being dialled back a bit in all mixes. Which is also true of a lot of other shows. Sometimes I wonder whether I should just turn on the subtitles and watch with them as a hearing aid. I understand that would also have blocked out half of Graham Norton on the BBC One transmission. Added bonus!

[infinitemonkeys]

Hurrah! A person who knows what she is talking about! I wondered if it might be something like that. I really noticed it in the early cave scenes.

I would vote for anything which blocks out Graham Norton generally.