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Trimming Television to Sell More Ads
gambit3 writes: "Tech TV has an article about a device called a "Digital Time Machine", that does something called "Time Trimming", which is basically a way to cut single frames from different scenes in TV programs, which, over the course of a 30 minute program, can add up to 30 seconds, which is, incidentally, the perfect length to add ANOTHER commercial."
They could use this to cut out frames from other commercials! Also, isn't there black space between commercials as it it? They could just cross fade everything into everything else, Just like on the more annoying radio stations. No wonder I don't own a TV! ::alan
Did you read the article?
The article clearly says that it does not pop or chirp, and that over 170 stations are already using it. I mean, if it was poping and chirping first of all everyone would know, and second of all the stations wouldn't use it.
I no more buy products because some clown makes me laugh, or some half naked girlie makes me excited. So what is the difference when instead of 'directly' selling me something, they are pushing some agenda that must use a fantasy environment (the fantasy environment created by ANY book, film, theater, etc) to make it sound plausable?
As long as Discovery, et al don't fall prey to this I imagine I will not even notice it.
Realistically 90% of people are going to put up with any crap you force on them, but still, this might make a lot of the type of people who read /. give up on live TV.
I also think it is silly to argue that no one will notice... I agree that it will be subtle, but think about it, .5/23= about 2.2% of the show, and that's assuming it was still a 23 min long show. Don't tell me you can hear compression artifacts in a 160kbps MP3, but you can't tell that the show is 2% faster. Doesn't break my heart with many of the shows they are playing, but 2% could very well have an effect on the timing of a dramatic scene in a good show or movie, and I think the networks are far more likely to use this in addition to and not instead of cutting scenes.
Well, it's a good thing many good TV series are coming out on DVD. And just keep watching Cartoon Network, since they have to follow the 6-min commercial limit ;)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Survey says... get real. It is absolutely a device to squeeze more commercials into a given time period. That's why it was made, how it is marketed, why it will be bought. Did you miss the part about the millions of dollars of extra ad revenue?
I remember from a year or so back (when I used to write closed captioning software) a couple of networks doing someting like this already. (I seem to recall PAX being one of them but wouldn't swear to that.)
The reason the whole thing sticks in my mind is that dropping frames like this plays hell with caption data and any other VBI data such as Web TV, VCHIP, etc.
Paramount has been playing all sorts of tricks with the UPN Voyager and Enterprise feeds at least since Mid to Late 1999, It's old news to me.
The interesting thing here is that the Enterprise Feeds sent to Canada, on Telstar 5 TP 16 for broadcast say on A-Channel don't have this
What we know is that this is lucurative, and people who can't compare the two will not know what it is that they are missing.
I suppose that these people will have to get a new name.
The purpose of the TV medium is to park your eyeballs on commercials so that you will buy the products. From the pov of the TV folks, the shows are incidental.
Unfortunately, you the viewer have demonstrated an unfortunate reluctance to immerse yourself in 30-120 minute blocks of advertisements.
Until such time as TV producers find a way to convince you to do that, you can expect them to do as much as is technically possible to add commercials until you get frustrated and stop watching TV.
The networks don't care whether you like the content of the programs. They only care whether you will watch the programs enough that a certain percentage of you see and or hear the advertisements.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
You seem to be trying to point out some kind of hypocrisy in Rush's position - that he has no right to complain because a business is trying to make money.
His complaining is no hypocrisy. Now if he sought the creation of some kind of government program to remedy a free market assault on the quality of his show - that would be hypocrisy.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
There's a solution. Don't watch the channel.
Taking a cue from all those advertisements that have been chopping the bottoms off the screen and overwriting part of the action with a semi-transparent channel logo I hereby predict:
Remember, you read it on Slashdot first!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The music industry convinced me to stop using their product. The prices have become exhorbitant, and the quality of the artistry has become lousy. Songwriters don't put out albums anymore, marketing departments do. So I have tossed them aside and stick with the old tunes that I still love. For new stuff I follow local bands and non-music-industry-affiliated bands I find here and there on the internet. I find that these guys, while they don't always have access to the best sound equipment, are producing songs of greater interest than the latest smash pop barbie/ken doll. ... I'm still hoping the MPAA and FCC don't manage to do to movies what the music industry has done to music.
The movie industry has almost convinced me to stop using their product. Movie prices keep rising, the quality of the theatres keep dropping. I find it unacceptable to go to a theatre and see 5 minutes of "black rain" when there's a bright white scene. I think that movies are also moving into the abyss, much like music, but at a much slower pace. There are still enough people making interesting movies to keep my interest alive. So if I shirk theatres that's no big deal; it's simple to make a home theatre these days. And then there's the whole DVD and HDTV mess
While I gave up on network TV a long time ago, I've found that many cable/satellite channels have quality entertainment in their lineups. Because of the sheer number of available channels, I always figured that cable/satellite TV would stay relatively unscathed by all the BS that has destroyed the music industry, and is gnawing at the movie industry. Then I read articles like this, and ones that talk about the fervent attepts to destroy the ability to record television programs. I can easily see television being the next media outlet that I throw away.
If there are any music/movie/television industry workers reading this thread, I just want to make it clear that in your rabid pursuit to further unbalance the scales of product and profit you are at the very least going to lose this customer. And I can't help but think there are others who feel the same.
I guess I'm done ranting for now.
RFC2119