Have you ever been excited to watch a game only to become deflated upon discovering one of your least favorite announcers is calling the action? Who am I kidding, if you've ever visited this website at any point in time, the answer is most certainly yes!
Just imagine a world in which you can peacefully watch the Home Run Derby without Chris Berman yelling "BACK, BACK, BACK…" and paying cliched tribute to local landmarks. Imagine a world in which your brain doesn't have to hurt anymore from Dan Dierdorf's replay explanations or Phil Simms' ramblings. Imagine a world where you could have a mute button for Tim McCarver, Jon Gruden, or any announcer that you'd rather not listen to while trying to enjoy your sports.
The future is now. Your prayers have been answered. The technology exists to remove commentary from live sporting events via your home sound system.
There's only one downside.
You may have to move to England to get the sound system as the Sony BDV-N7100W hits UK stores in May and contains technology initially developed by NASA. The new state of the art home system is able to differentiate commentary from background noise and remove the announcers' voices to allow you to enjoy the ambient atmosphere of the stadium with its "football mode"…
"Sony says that its speakers are able to recognise what is the natural ambient sound of a sporting event, and what is somebody nattering on top.
It does this using data captured at a Brazilian football stadium, and without anything happening on the broadcaster's end it's able to remove the commentary entirely.
Sky has offered a similar facility for some of its matches for a while – but this will work with any sports event, including rugby, NFL and motorsport.
The benefit is that fans can watch sport as if they're at the game, and not sitting next to a relentlessly unimpressive summariser with a booklet of cliches."
Why anyone would want to mute the likes of Martin Tyer for a football match escapes me, too bad our London bureau wasn't taking calls this morning. Honestly, British sports fans can't have it all that bad – they've never been subjected to Matt Millen or Craig James. Trust me, a "booklet of cliches" isn't all bad in comparison. But whiile the dream of "football mode" may be an ocean away, the technology does exist to liberate you of awful announcing for any sporting event. We can only hope it comes to American homes in the near future.
