While making the rounds of the tables at one of last November's Comdex press events, I was intrigued by the Terk VR-1 being displayed at Octiv's table. Octiv is a Berkeley California company specializing in what they call the "too loud - too soft" problem that they say is rampant in today's audio content. Octiv's "VolumeLogic" technology is used in the VR-1, providing automatic gain reduction, compression, and noise reduction. Octiv's signal-processing magic is all aimed at keeping your TV's volume steady without the unwanted "pumping" effects produced by less sophisticated audio compression techniques.

Their pitch certainly resonated with me, since my wife and I have worn out the volume buttons on a couple of remotes from adjusting our TV's volume to avoid the blast that accompanies each commercial break. (Octiv says people adjust volume up to 25 times an hour.) Although it's not a networking product, I figured I could take a look at it and mention it in a Holiday product guide article.

Well, the holidays came and went and I never wrote the article, but did try the product. I figured I better write something about it or I'd never be able to face the nice folks from Octiv the next time I saw them!