People sometimes leave the room during commercial breaks. Advertisers realized this and started increasing transmitting much louder audio to make sure the audience can't get away. So I use the mute button and the problem is solved.

What if broadcasting companies sent signals during commercials that told the TV to disable these features? "They've enjoyed the movie, now it's time to make them pay. Don't let them change the channel, mute the audio or lower the volume". How long would it take before TVs that didn't follow these intructions entered the market?

Browsers have features publishers don't want people to have. We can download copies of "their" content. We can delete their ads. We can filter out their user tracking malware. This is possible because the browser serves us, not them.

One other thing that's tangentially related to this: Region restrictions on DVD players, and gaming consoles. Those were built right into the hardware/firmware of some of these devices.