Peacock adding enhancements that may allow fans to mute announcers, control crowd noise

Peacock could be on the precipice of a streaming innovation that would completely personalize the fan experience.

The NBC-owned streamer announced at the CES conference in Las Vegas that it will integrate new Dolby products into its platform, enhancing “the sights and sounds of the games,” according to a report by Joe Lemire in Sports Business Journal. The changes will provide fans “more vivid and balanced colors, immersive sound and clearer dialogue, even when there’s loud background or ambient noise.”

NBC is already widely praised for the crisp picture quality of its sports broadcasts, and this would seem to only improve the experience.

One interesting detail, NBCUniversal’s SVP of Global Video Engineering David Bohunek notes, is that these broadcast enhancements could lead to features where viewers can control the audio level for a game’s announcers and the ambient crowd noise.

“With AC-4 and the personalization of the audio, we can let the customers do what they prefer with a very simple control in our own UI,” he said, “and maybe let them turn off commentary completely if that’s what they want.”

This is the type of innovation some fans have been clamoring for. While many will still prefer the traditional broadcast, with commentators mixed in with crowd noise, some viewers might prefer to mute the announcers entirely and hear only the natural sounds of the game. Conversely, other fans might believe the game audio is too loud, and prefer to turn the announcers up and keep the crowd noise at a lower level. Either way, putting control in the hands of the fans is a no-brainer if the technology allows for it.