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AOL-Time/Warner's PVR to Skip Ad-Skipping
btempleton writes "Echoing recent comments that PVR users are thieves a story from CNET announces that AOL's set-top box plans may not allow skipping ads. Broadcasters continue to be afraid of the PVR, admitedly with good reason for their current business model. As I point out in my essay on the future of TV, PVRs and Advertising, TV ads are a terrible bargain for the user, paying us about $1.20 per hour of our attention, and something has to change. It's worth noting that they say they like the Tivo over the Replay because the Tivo does not have 30 second skip, but in fact it does."
Scientific Atlanta will be providing the DVR box. It will be able to record both analog and digital channels. It will not use Tivo software. It has dual tuners so you can record one show while watching another. For more info, see this press release.
If you live in an area served by Time Warner AOL cable, they will give you the choice-limiting box as part of the service. For analog service, you can simply bypass the box and use your cable-ready TV. But for digital cable and premium channels, you'll have to use their box.
Don't expect to buy some unencumbered replacement box from another source either. Most of these boxes are made just for the cable industry. Yes there are gray-market sources, so you can get a box that lets you watch HBO for free. That constitutes theft of service under 47 U.S.C section 553. They could use the same argument for these new boxes.
Fast forward buttons don't care how long a commercial break is, and if the device has something like TiVo's skipback adjustment it works very well indeed.
Additionally there are certain markers that surround advertising blocks - fade in/outs are the cheap and easy way to look for them, but a gain meter on the sound level is better. And circumventing these things is considerably harder - especially the second one.
Banner ads are the least avoidable of all of this... without some custom filtering on each show you'll have to live with them. And I've already seen one network (don't recall if it's Fox or CBS) start to use them during programming. And badly - they rescale the main show to a new aspect ratio for 15-20s while running the banner ad. Makes everyone look short and fat. Freaking annoying.
A recent article in Ad Age quotes statistics which show that
PVR users are as likely to watch ads as ordinary viewers
and
PVR viewers watch more televisions than ordinary viewers.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Yes, that's right, Anthony Stewart Head, who would later play Rupert Giles, the Watcher, and the Librarian for Sunnydale High School on Buffy, was the Taster's Choice guy. He also has a career in music and a recent album.
I think the problem is that we've got two different notions of skipping ads here. The first is to fast-forward through advertisements. Even though the ads are being played without sound and the majority of frames are being dropped, they're still briefly popping up on the screen with a chance to grab your attention (especially since you're actively watching the screen to know when to hit play). This is the ad skipping method used by Tivo owners who haven't enabled the 30 second skip backdoor.
The other ad skipping method is to really skip over the ads using a 30 second skip button or even automatic commercial detection/elimination. The user just whacks the skip button until the TV show is back on screen (or does nothing in the case of the automated process). Under this situation, even the most well-written ad has no chance at grabbing your attention. The 30 second skip button is the method used by ReplayTV owners.
Now it's my guess (based on what little the article says and a little common sense) that they're using the notion of ad skipping to refer to the second skip method. I don't believe that they're disabling the fast-forward button every time a commercial break shows up.
Based on your comment that you don't see why anyone would buy this at all, I suspect you interpreted the article to mean that they were prohibiting the first type of ad skipping. I think that isn't the case here.
The coffee ads were in the commercial breaks, but had their own little storylines in each "episode" and the episodes had an overall storyline behind them. Whether they sold any more instant coffee is a good question, as others have commented.
This is not new. In 1997 I bought a VCR which automatically skips commercials, all by itself.
It does this by rewinding to the beginning of the recording and analyzing the tape looking for the moment of black screen and zero audio level that typically marks the beginning and end of commercial breaks. It places index marks on the tape at these points. It takes about 5-10 minutes per hour of recorded material to mark a recording.
When you watch the tape, it detects the index marks and automagically fast-forwards through the commercials, resuming normal speed at just the right point. It works like a charm, and only occasionally misses a mark, in which case you can recover quickly using the remote. I'd say it is 95-97% accurate.
The technology is called "Commercial Advance" and is trademarked and patented. Don't confuse it with the "commercial skip" function on some VCRs, which is simply a 30-second fast forward to be used manually.
To this day I continue to be amazed by 3 things:
(1) it works as advertised;
(2) it is still on the market and has not been suppressed by advertising interests;
(3) my VCR is made by RCA, and RCA is owned by GE, which also owns the NBC network, whose revenue stream this product subverts. (Panasonic also ships this feature on some of its VCRs).
There are more details and a review here .
You've got some good points there, but you're making a couple wrong assumptions. First, the Nielson ratings set the BASIC ad rates. It is really just a starting point for price negotiation. Advertisers are just as interested in demographics as they are in number of people watching. Most advertisers want younger viewers who are more influenced by advertising, so a show that teens watch will merit a premium price over the basic ad rate. If advertisers or ad agents don't think price is right, they don't buy, and the ad time has to be sold at a discount, directly impacting the network.
Second, all this is based on some Nielson families. So your use of a TiVO to watch shows you normally wouldn't doesn't actully change the ad rate unless you are one of the Nielson families. I would guess that Nielson families are not allowed to use DVRs. So the more that the general public uses DVRs, or even a regualr VCR, to skip the ads, the less that advertisers and their agents will be willing to pay "the rate."
You are correct though that if viewers are given a choice about what ads they watch, then they may pay more attention to the ones they choose. If networks could convice advertisers of that, then they might be able to increase advertisers faith in ad time, and therefore protect their rates. But devices that automatically don't record the ads to begin with really do kill the networks current business model.
Not that I think that is a bad thing, but a judge probably will.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.