Slashdot Mirror
ReplayTV May Drop "Commercial Advance"
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News is reporting that the new owners of ReplayTV are considering dropping the Commercial Advance and Send Show options features." I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway. Between that and the 30 second skip function, I'm surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!
I've thought of Tivo and Replay TV in the past, but as time goes on the companies degrade their products by getting rid of useful features like this.
How feasable is it to do something as good, but without the crippling, on a computer with a large hard disk and good video card?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They're eliminating some of their main selling points, aren't they?
About 3 months ago I was really considering buying a ReplayTV, but with the whole bankruptcy thing swirling around I became a bit anxious. I have been speaking with people who currently own a Replay and they said their service is still great, so I was starting to come back around. This whole thing has just sent me back towards the Tivo way. I would love to get a Tivo, but I do not have a phone line in my house (cell phone is the only phone I need). Hopefully I can find a Tivo that will not require a phone line, and I will be all over it.
Johnkoerner.com
I don't understand why ReplayTV would even consider removing those features, especially seeing as those are two of the HUGE advantages it has over its (winning) competitor Tivo.
Sure, Tivo has the 30 second skip if you have the right model and you enter in the Easter Egg, but most people don't surf around for Easter Eggs and therefore aren't aware of it (plus it isn't advertised as a feature for drones shopping at Best Buy, etc.).
They already declared bankruptcy and were bought out by another company, so somehow by eliminating some of its most compelling features they are going to rise to the top?
The commercial skip works great on sitcoms that are on the main network stations. That's about it. On TechTV and G4 it doesn't skip past the long commericals (video professor, that air filter thing). On dramas like 24, Buffy or Alias it skips too far, requiring me to rewind several minutes. I probably use commercial skip on about 1/4th of all my recorded shows.
> You do know that advertising is what pays for TV programming, broadcasting, etc., in the USofA, don't you?
nope. consumers pay for broadcasting in the usa with the extra cost of their consumer goods due to the spend on advertising. The adverts don't come for free, and the companies advertising the goods pass that cost on to the consumer.
in countries with a TV licence, the cost is yearly/ monthly/ not-optional, but it costs *less* (unless you buy *no* consumer goods during the year.)
IF FMCG companies weren't spending the money on adverstising, your goods would be cheaper, and your TV viewing would be uninterrupted by ads.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Like any drug, used occasionally, wisely, and with moderation, it can add pleasure to your life without ruining it.
I like TV when I'm frustrated; it can reset my mind when I'm spinning on some issue. I like TV when I'm ill; it takes my mind off the suffering. I like TV when I have 30 minutes to kill and there happens to be an episode of The Simpsons on.
It's a drug many, many people abuse, and I'm sure that's what you're thinking of in your post. If you're watching TV three hours a night, every night, it's clearly a drug that has begun to control you. If you're settling for the best thing on TV rather than getting on with your life, you're doing it wrong.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: "Good TV is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it."
I do wish most people would watch less TV, but I think that declaring TV in general to be a "disease" is counterproductive. Try thinking of it as a drug that too many people are addicted to.
On the other hand, I've never actually tried this, and am just thinking out loud...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
/don foil hat
We already have those, our tivo's think we're gay, and are telling advertisers we will pay over a hundred dollars a year to avoid them (do I watch a $100 in advertising?). God help you if you fall asleep with the TV on skinamax overnight.
I can tolerate some advertising with my tv. I would much rather be able to rate/select advertisements so I didn't have to see people discussing muffin maintenance or "truth" ad's that are absurd to the point of almost promoting the products they revile.
This is also why I send the local PBS and public radio station a fat check every year.
I don't see anything in the article that mentions the 30 second quick skip. They are talking about Commercial Advance (which jumps over commercials automatically when it detects them) and the send show feature.
;)
I'm sure many RTV owners will agree with me that having the ability to send shows over the internet is pretty pointless (it can take hours to days to send one). That feature is probably rarely used my most. However, in the process, D&M better not remove the ability to stream shows from other RTVs on your LAN. That would sucks and break DVArchive (which is probably the biggest selling point of Replays).
Now Commercial Advance is a nice feature, but it only works on about 1/2 of the shows I watch, and on that half it doesn't work flawlessly. It wouldn't kill me to lose this features, but it is one of the reasons why I bought a Replay instead of Tivo.
Lastly there is the 30 second skip. There is no talk of removing this feature...and they better not. Being able to "shorten" show watching time is one of the big reasons for owning a PVR in the first place. This feature is a must!
And for those who don't know, you can do a X minute skip by typing the number of minutes on the keypad and pressing skip. 3 + Skip works well to skip over a lot of commercials.
ÕÕ
I've not found commercial advance to do a good job of identifying the commercials, and always turn it off. The skip forward feature is just as effective, particularly if you're watching a show you watch frequently enough to know the pattern of the commercials.
I think the networks should align the commercials very regularly, such that a 30-second skip will give you a few frames after the start of each commercial. I've been watching TV with a ReplayTV recently, and haven't seen any of the commercials people have talked about. Ideally, people would skip all of the commercials which aren't targetting at them and watch the ones that are because they're interesting.
Ads between shows are also effective, since ReplayTV continues to play the audio while you're selecting a show and doesn't let you skip if there's nothing to skip to.
Same in North America.
A TV which does not obscure the overscan area will show the flashing white square in the top left.
IIRC, it flashes slowly for a few seconds 30 s before break, starts flashing rapidly 5 or 10 before, and goes solid during the above mentioned transition to the still frame.
Course, I haven't seen it recently on modern TVs which cover the overscan area well...perhaps it's changed...
>You pay the cable company for the connection to them and using them.
Then why do some commercial supported channels cost more than other commercial supported channels?
And, seriously, it isn't that expensive to get a connection to the uplink. Heck, I can do it with consumer parts for under $50 these days (people are just trashing their old C-Band systems... so sad, really). For a cable company, I'd say no more than $5000 per satellite, and $2000 per channel. At current rates most cable co's should have all the stations paid for in a month.
The fact is you don't just pay for the connection / upkeep of the connection, you actually have to pay for the already commercial supported channels. It's sad, really.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC