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The State of Automated Commercial Skipping
iskqy writes "Even though attention to commerical skipping has gone down since the motion picture studios sued replaytv for it, I've noticed that it appears to be alive and well in some PVR products on the market. ReplayTV PVRs have it (though different from what they got sued for) in what they call Show|Nav (what a terrible feature name!) and SnapStream's Beyond TV has it in a feature they call SmartSkip. In both cases, the user has to press a button to automagically skip a commercial (vs. the original ReplayTV feature which skipped them without any user intervention) but it's basically the same thing. ReplayTV plays down commercial skipping ("jump forward and back between scenes in a show") but SnapStream is more open about the feature ("Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows"). "
I wish I could 'automagically' skip parts of my life I got bored with/didn't want to endure.
crap, not first post. oh well, i still think the feature is really good. i'm just waiting for the reply TV hack that makes it automated again. considerin what can be done when people want to hack (xbox linux) i don't think this will be difficult.
~Eric
bettse at onid.orst.edu
This has probably been said already (maybe not) but isnt suing replaytv for giving consumers the ability to skip commercials like suing mozilla for blocking popups?
MythTV has had this feature for awhile and it can be set to automatically skip commercials so you dont have to press a button to skip them.
aside from the lawsuits, maybe the push for this techology will force the media to step up their game when it comes to the quality of commercials.. it seems that more and more people are watching things like the superbowl - just to see the commercials that promoters spent time and money to develop.. either the quality of the commercials will increase, or they will go the way of the internet banner ad..
As a TIVO/ReplayTV virgin, how does the commercial skipping operate? Does it skip a certain amount of time ahead? Does it somehow use motion compensation to detect frame changes and stop fast forwarding when the scene has changed a significant amount? Are commercials just a set amount of time and I've never noticed it all these years? Is it more like a VCR system where you have to fast forward and then curse when you went too far, and then it uses scene changes to go back? Any ideas?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
What we need now is something that can learn what a commercial is and automatically skip it.
It shouldn't be too hard, maybe using some of the techniques now used for spam. Maybe figuring out a way to share a known list of commercials with others.
Sorry, but the networks have no inherent RIGHT to make money. It's wonderful if they can, but if they feel they are loosing money due to commerical skipping then maybe their business model isn't viable anymore and they need to think about change. Nothing makes me more enraged than corporations that seek protection from congress rather than adapting to new market conditions.
Do PVRs just skip ahead 2 minutes to skip commericals? Not all commerical breaks are two minutes. Especially commercials during sporting events. Do these PVR's have a way to "sense" when a commercial block is ending or is it just timing? If so, how does it work?
How American!
I *always* skip adverts. I specifically tape everything I watch (well, except news ) so I can skip them out. If that's breaking the law then sue me.
I've always used this device to mark my commercials in my tapes.
I have to say that I much prefer my vcr's automatic commercial skip over Replay's, as long as I am going to be a passive viewer. With the replay, you keep hitting the skip button, until you reach the end of the commerical block, and then sometimes you have to backtrack. Where as with any standard vcr, after you record a show, it goes back and flags commercials, and when you play it, the vcr automatically fast forwards through commercials. maybe not as handy, but much simpler.
So, as people switch to skipping commercials, we will probably see a huge push in product placement in new tv shows. Hell, I was watching some movie channel the other day, and the people who introduced the movie also doubled as salesmen, trying to push some random product on me.
Looking forward to seeing bart's room covered in butterfinger wrappers.
no
I welcome the ability for people to skip commercials or advertisements for the simple reason that they fail to deliver on their goal. They only seem to annoy people and motivate them to switch channels.
/ads are repeated over and over again. If I wasn't interested the first time, then I doubt I will be the 100th time. This is the same way with SPAM. I get 3 offers a day for the same useless products. One thing I really hate about Discovery channel (and others) is that they only have about a dozen commercials that they play over and over and over again.
If a commercial / ad actually imparts information or entertainment value, then I enjoy and look forward to it, the first couple times. Too many commercials
It is unfortunate that advertisers believe (and possibly rightfully so) that consumers are more likely to purchase a product if they are repeatedly exposed to an ad that does not actually provide information about the product, but instead annoys the heck out of them due to content or frequency of occurrence.
Much like elections, it usually comes down to name recognition.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Most commercials come in 30 second slots. Hence, it's common to see both 30 second and one minute spots on prime time television. Once in a while (the Superbowl comes to mind) you may see a 15 second spot.
I have the ( now ancient ) Dish Networks PVR 501. it's got a skip forward 30 seconds ( I think ) and skip back 5 seconds buttons. if you're watching a show that's recorded ( or your far enough behind real time ), when you arrive at a commercial, hit the skip forward a couple times and boom, you've skipped the commercials. it's really quite simple.
I own a TiVo, and I understand the benefits of skipping ads. However, I don't think this is what DVRs so compelling. Time shifting a show (watching a football almost live from the start after missing the 1st quarter) and season passes (TiVo: Record all new Simpsons episodes and save them all until I delete them. And start the recording a minute early & end it a minute late) are much more useful. When I'm watching something intently, skipping ads is great; when I'm watching TV while doing something else, it sometimes is more of a pain than its worth-- sometimes I fell like I *have* to skip ads.
Commercial skipping is nice nonetheless, although I'm not sure how useful automatic skipping is; I'e never tried it. TiVo also has the ability to skip 30-second chunks of shows. Just start playing something from "Now Playing." Press Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. You'll hear 3 "dings." Now when you press the "jump-to-live" button, you'll skip 30 seconds at a time. You have to repeat this procedure if the TiVo gets rebooted.
Since so many TV stations now put an obtrusive station logo in a corner of the screen, I think a useful commercial detection device could detect if part of the signal isn't changing.
Teach those stations to clutter up my screen with their crap.
I remember back in the late 1980s listening to my parents and their disgust at commercial television stations now having up to THREE advertisements in ad spots, when before it was one, or maybe two on a slow night.
Now, on pay television and free to air, I'm seeing 8-12 advertisements in each slot, and massive amounts of the shows I watch being cut out. Last time I watched X-Files (only because I know it used to be 43 minutes per episode when first shown) the entire show was cut down to 35 minutes. that's eight minutes of the show I want to watch gone, and over 80 advertisements.
Now. What's the difference? What's so pricey nowadays that requires so many advertisements constantly?
Pricey reality television shows. blah.
You got the Green Light...
Penis This, Penis That.
Paris Hilton This, Paris Hilton That.
Interest Rates This, Interest Rates That.
Wish I could add Sound For a memorable Jingle.
How does this technology know what a commerial is, when it begins and when it ends?
thelikesofwhich.com
OK, time to do Slashdot's favorite pasttime: playing armchair lawyer.
Any insight into how the DMCA may be used to force software and/or hardware companies from incorporating commercial skip feature in their products? For example, can a TV network claim that there is an encryption feature in commercials and because of this encryption, any commercial skip feature is a circumvention device and should be banned?
Let's hear your IANAL-caliber opinions.
...since I always skip commercials. Hell I should be classified as a totally unamerican freak since I can honestly say that there are full weeks where I don't even see/hear a commercial.
Even worse I don't even have any form of broadcast/cable/sat television signal coming into my home at all.
Horrors! I must be some sort of terrorist freak since I prefer to spend my time reading books. Were it not for my DVD collection and my PS2 I'd not even have a TV in the house.
Send out the FBI! Notify the NSA! Wake up the CIA spooks! Get John Ashcroft's head out of the collective asses of Americans!
The Television Anti-Christ stalks the Earth
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Unfortunately, skipping does not mean the end of commercials, just commercials as we know them.
Subtle and not so subtle product placements will ensure that we continue to see advertising every time we watch TV, despite our best efforts.
I suggest listening to public streaming radio (in ogg format no less) as a wonderful alternative to the tripe Madison avenue continues to shove down your throat.
Unless you like tripe. Whatever floats your boat.
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Ads are just an excuse to save money on the production costs needed to run a full hour long show.
Ummm, no. Ads are how a tv station makes money. They have no other sources of revenue. Without money, they go out of business.
You have failed to support the American plutocracy. Please report for reeducation.
A "United We Stand/Worship the Military" bumper sticker is on it's way in the mean time.
The big red button on my TV-set turned out to be the perfect Ad-skipping device with 100% accuracy. The loss of little content hidden between the commercial can be discounted as negligeable.
No I don't work for ReplayTV nor do I sell these. Just providing info...
Having owned a ReplayTV for some time now, I can let you guys know exactly how the commercial skip and the new show/nav features work.
Commercial skip, when on, attempts to detect commercials and skip over them. It uses an unspecified algorithm, most likely relying on fade-outs and black screens. It does not blindly skip ahead x number of minutes.
There is another feature that is quite handy, a button on the remote that skips ahead 30 seconds. Another button will skip backwards 7 seconds. In addition, you can type a number on the remote (like "3") then hit the skip ahead or skip backwards button, it will skip that many minutes ahead or backward.
Another feature is, if you want to skip to a certain portion of the show, and you know how many minutes into the show that portion is, you can just type that number and hit the "skip" button.
Show/Nav works similar to commercial skip, but you have to press the right-direction button. You can also go backwards by pressing the left-direction button. I find it helps to see the time, just to make sure I don't skip too far ahead... so I hit "select" to show the current program time, then hit the right-direction button. If it skips too far ahead, I just hit the left-direction button, then use the other methods to jump over the commercials.
I have a ReplayTV, one of the older ones with the automatic skip intact.
What it seems to do is look for a frame which is a very dark black - blacker than a normal 'black' in a show. These usually occur at program to commercial transitions. It then skips forward to the start of the next long block without such a super black frame.
Sometimes its a little overzealous and mistakes a very dark shot inside a show as the start of an ad, and sometimes it fails to catch the start of an ad break. I think it tries to exercise some intelligence, since false positives usually occur near the start of ad blocks. It seems to look for groups of black frames.
In case of a false negative, manually hitting 'commercial skip' takes you instantly to the end of the ad block.
Its a *great* feature, and I'm really PO'd that the newer machines don't have it.
I also have a VCR that does this, but it required post-processing on a recorded show to mark the ads. Once this was done (takes about 15 minutes for an hour show) it would automagically FF through the ads.
It should be easy to identify commercials for skipping. They are the blocks of broadcast time that don't have the Broadcast Flag set.
Must shop...must spend money...must build debt...buy crap now...
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Of course this is why the media industry sued ReplayTV into oblivion. Cut out the ads and you significantly cut their revenue and ability to produce the shows. Too bad cable/satellite TV isn't more like the current state of satellite radio -- way fewer ads per program hour! Paying for cable TV seems to only get me more ads targeted to my demographic group.
While nearly all of us who have PVR's enjoy the ability to skip screaming car salesmen, corporate drug pushers (pharmaceutical companies), incredibly heart warming financial companies touting their trustwothiness, etc. etc. et. all ad nauseum, eliminating them from our entertainment will be all but impossible. In fact, by eliminating the containerized thirty or sixty second ads, we'll instead get blasted by pop-ups and embedded product placements, etc., AND the traditional commercial. In fact, it is already happening. To wit:
Disney owns ABC, ESPN and the Discovery Channel. How often on ESPN does one see "the stars" of that great new hit on ABC? How often does ABC tout programs on ESPN? And now, Discovery is in the act too, offering us "documentaries" on the magic behind Disney World in Orlando. And of course, who owns Disney World? Disney.
Films made by Sony's studios almost always feature Sony equipment when a given character is using his or her PC. Also, the word "SONY" is often in huge black letters on the rear of a monitor, even though they aren't usually so prominent on the products shipped to Joe Consumer from the factory.
Add to that the PAID product placements like Coca-Cola being drunk by a given character. There are many of those.
And finally, the grand-daddy of product advertising discguised as content: NASCAR. Each car is festooned with no less than twenty different sponsors, starting with the make and model of the auto being raced (even they have exactly one part in common with their street version: the roof panel) plus the major sponsor of the driver, plus the minor sponsor plus all the super-minor sponsors not the least of which is NACAR itself. The whole race is a rotating advertisement, one which the competitors are trying not only to beat each other but also to gain the most exposure time for their sponsors. A higher position on the track means more "impressions" for the sponsors on the viewers. Best of all, when a driver is interviewed, he thanks 1) God 2) his crew and of course his sponsors for painting his "Folger's/Viargra/Ford/Taurus" in their colors. The entire event is, in short, an ad.
That's direction we're headed. Like death, taxes and Microsoft security flaws, one simply cannot avoid marketing. It's simply more malleable than are the viewers or listeners of a given content.
Automatic commercial skipping has been around for years. I had the capability on a VCR that I had about 8 years ago. The way it works is that the device looks for the completely black screen that preceeds the commercial and the resumption of the show. Next time you're watching a show, pay attention to that transition and you'll see it. It apparently never happens at other times (well, hardly ever: my VCR was fooled once in a great while by something in the middle of a show or string of commercials). If my Tivo had something like that, it'd be even more awesome (but, the manual skipping using the remote ain't that bad as it is).
Has anyone ever based a multi-thousand dollar car purchase on a car ad they saw? I'm sure some ad exec would bend over backwards trying to make some tenuous psychological argument about "sub conscious choices" or "product awareness" but I think car makers just waste a hell of a lot of money in the end.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
But I think between commercial and normal program there is a single frame of color (a blue frame IIRC) and some other visual info which we do not see but a chip can detect. Now this was some year ago so this might not be either the case today , or even the caser in US.
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visit randi.org
My old VCR used the completely black screens that preceed the commercial and the resumption of the show.
They have a one-day special 'cause we slashdotted them.
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Pick from one of the items below:
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Even though I've had a ton of issues with the product quality (two units dying), I LOVE my ReplayTV 5080 for three reasons:
1. Automatic Commercial skips WORKS. (It works best when a show has "bumpers".)
2. Networking...with DV Archive I can offload shows onto unlimited drive space and/or burn to DVD.
3. Component video...yes I know the source is only S-Video, but there is an unquestionable increase in quality. I have both s-video and component outs hooked up, and there IS a difference.
I also prefer the ReplayTV Interface. It doesn't have those cutesy annoying Tivo noises.
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
You can -- smoke a bowl. :)
:P
420.
Automatic skip commercial recording all together... save me several hours of wasted hard-drive space.
It appears that the reason ReplayTV got sued is because the boxes were automatically skipping commercials, without the user's intervention in any way. It could be argued that perhaps a user wants to see the commercials, but were prevented from doing so because the PVRs were doing so without prompting from the user.
Popups, on the other hand, and at least for now, require that a person enable popup blocking, so they are voluntarily requesting to skip "web commercials", and it can't be argued that a user might have missed a "feature" that they wanted to see. When Microsoft's next version of IE automagically disables popups, we'll have to see if they get their hands slapped in a simmilar manner to ReplayTV.
Also, it could be argued that popup and popunder advertisements are really a hack/loophole in the web standards (especially popups that trap on the back & close buttons), and that this was not the intended usage, so a user has the right to take "corrective" measures to disable them.
The RCA DRC7005N Personal Video Recorder/DVD Player is another DVR that provides a 30 second skip ahead feature on the remote control. It describes that feature as "commercial skip" but it doesn't do any ReplayTV-style automated detection of commercials. On the whole, however, it seems like a fine product that provides the usual DVR features (pause live TV, record from on-screen program guide, etc.) without any subscription fee. I have one and am not affiliated with RCA :-).
But I have seen TV-shows where they have been tested for taste. A panel tastes them blind and rate them. According to them Coca Cola had the worst taste. Don't know wich one came out on top.
Yet Coca cola is the best selling one.
Coca cola company is also the softdrinkcompany that spends the most money on commercials.
Commercials do work. Perhaps not for you for this product, but it will for others or for you with other products.
And the more you repeat something the more people will start believing it. For that take a look on the Iraq-USA war propaganda.
Some companies see it in their salesfigures when they do commercials and when not.
I don't hate commercials because they try to sell me something. I hate them because they try to trick/force/mindalter/lure me into buying their junk, wich I might even not need.
Do you buy something because you need it or because of commercials?
Try this. When you see a commercial, don't buy that product for say a week. Do that with e.g. coke or fanta.
I almost never buy it anymore, save for a party. (fanta, not coke). After a while you don't miss it anymore and you can ask yourself the question: Did I buy because I wanted to, because I saw some add?
Man, Bravo's "The Restaurant" has the most obvious and offensive product placement I've ever seen. It's almost painful to watch. Whenever they have a beer delivery, the camera seems to go outside to watch the Coors Light truck pull up and slide the crisp, refreshing ice cold Coors Light into the restaurant, inside of which the Coors Light spokesmodel twins are happily enjoying a crisp, refreshing, ice cold Coors Light... You find a scene of it in every episode.
Then, there's Mitsubishi, which isn't *so* bad.. but it was never really explained why the restaurant recieved several new Mitsubishi superfancy motorscooters that always seem to be placed hipply in front of the place.. But it sure was useful when that waitress wanted to quit: "Come for a ride with me on the Vello (sp?), I know you'll stay with us" -- "Oh, you like the red one? It's yours!".
The least frequent, but most... horrifying was American Express, with their Open Account for small businesses. Every time they have a money issue (Can't get paychecks out, bills to pay, ect), they run to the computer and announce "Let's call American Express and have them extend a line of credit to our American Express Open Account to get us out of this hot water", and then show the *same clip* (in every episode that features AmEx) of them browsing the userfriendly and lifesaving American Express Open Account webpage.
Pfft.
Good points. I personally address this issue by not connecting an antenna to my television, but I'm concerned about advertising in movies. In short, my eyeballs aren't for sale, but there are some occasions where I find it difficult to keep my gaze pure of influence. It isn't like I'm some automaton who will obey advertising, but I don't like the influence.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
There was a controversy about 20 years ago, when ppl started noticing commercials were LOUDER than the show. Measurements were taken, and indeed with a dB meter the show and commercial volumes were about the same.
Some of us knew though, that a dB meter measures 'heating', or average level. The new trick advertisers were using was sampling, which essentially PULSED the audio, at much higher levels, so it looked the same on a meter, because its heating value (duty cycle) was equivalent, but sounded louder, because it deflected speakers more.
Replay commercial skip just looks for video blackouts, which typify transition to/from commercial. Though this makes mistakes on dark shows/interludes, it's still amazingly good.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
But let's not forget the problems that ReplayTV is CURRENTLY undergoing: ReplayTV Ruins Christmas
MythTV also has this feature built in.
I cannot emphasize just how cool this project is - it has all the features you'd expect from a modern DVR, and many more besides. It's open-source and immensely configurable. For example:
I also decided I'd like to be able to transfer recorded programs to my machine at work and watch them there, so I hacked up a little script to re-encode them at 100kbps, and added a "Watch Now" link to the MythWeb HTML web interface.
The other day my wife was complaining that the fonts on the screen were too small, so I tweaked the XML configuration file to bump them up a bit.
Thanks to LIRC, I can pretty much use any remote I like to control the box. I'm using an ancient, spare TV remote right now, and I can map the buttons whichever way I like.
It'll also optionally rip DVDs and CDs, enabling you to play them from the hard drive. It will also play pretty much any video file you have (through MPlayer). If I want to show the wife a movie trailer that I've downloaded from the internet, I just copy it over to the MythTV box, and she can watch it on the television.
Let's see you do all *that* with a Tivo!
From I, Cringely:
"By the way, how does Replay's Commercial Advance know what is a TV ad to be able to cut it out? Apparently, Replay listens for the temporary volume increase that broadcasters have long told us does not accompany commercials. Liars."
The whole article is worth a read...
There are VCR's on the market which has a 30 second fast forward (like a skip feature).
Oh I forgot to add that normal desktop TVs can skip commercials too. The user changes the channel and now the user will not see the commercial on that channel.
Maybe there should be a lawsuit for that.
Is to get rid of your television. No purchase or installation required :).
For years I thought television, even cable was crap, but I let myself be held hostage by "that one good show".
Back in June I moved and I decided to leave the TV behind on purpose.
To be honest, every once in a blue moon I miss the tube.
However, in the balance I read more, get more sleep, I get more exercise, see my friends more, study more, go out....in short, I have more of a life.
I still watch DVDs of some good movies....and even "that one good show" on PC.
Steve
Why not use several methods to determine if there's a commercial?
1. The blackout interval. Sometimes though, like on Frasier there's blackouts during the program.
2. The audio levels
3. Closed captioning. Are commercials closed captioned? I haven't goofed off with CC settings for a while. My advent tv seems to have several of them.
4. network bug detection.
Perhaps using a combination of the 4 above can do perfect commercial skippage. Then have it make a small database of which times it skipped commercials a day/week before to give it a general guideline on when to do it again.
Take your anti-spam tech and use it towards tv commercials.
We develop filters. I can Ignore 80-90% of all billboards and posted advertisements.
So if you have the characters drinking "Coke" in the show instead of 2 minutes worth of coke commercials throught the show, I'll take it. Show me the show without interruption.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Just to spell it out
:D
;)
J o k e !
Ads are not the only way TV stations make their money. They sell shows to other stations and there are some excellent national TV stations eg the BBC.
And if you pay a regular subscription to watch TV you're also paying for the priviliedge of watching those ads.
"Deleting the commercials creates an unauthorized derivative work, just like deleting certain scenes of a movie creates an unauthorized derivative work"
If I erase a movie from a visdeo cassettte, I am crating a derivitive work?
If I buy a poster of a copyrighted character, it is illegal for my to destroy the poster because it is a derivitive work?
Editing a scene from a movie certianly changes the movie, so it is a derivitive work, but deleting it is just removing it, not changing it.
You claim to be a lawyer, so I grant you some leeway, but can you show a link to back up the assertation that deleting a commercial is a derivitive work?
Two final points:
1. I think I have the right to chose what I watch;
2. I modifing something I purchased isn't a violation of copyright, changing it and then distributing it without permission is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a reason why we need free software that Joe-sixpack will understand. With free software you're in control. When it's proprietary, the owner can be pressured to release features that are good for you but unprofitable.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
For those of you that are old enough to remember... "Call for Philip Morris!!"
You can find old tv shows on DVD. Just watch a single episode of "Racket Squad", and be glad we're not back at that level of commercial advertising.
(for those of you that don't want to find the shows... the show was a semi-interesting police drama... and the entire thing was a cigeratte ad)
What makes you think they don't have a right to make money but you have the right to watch free TV?
Neither of us have these rights.
They have the right to put whatever they want on the airwaves. I have the right to watch, or not watch, as I so choose.
Just as I do not have the right to re-broadcast their signals, they most certainly do not have the right to enact (or cause to be enacted) legislation banning devices that allow me to play with their signals. Once it comes into MY home, it's MINE.
Clear?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I don't mind watching commercials... some of them are quite clever and amusing. Some of them inform me regarding things I'd like to be aware of. But some of them annoy the hell out of me.
What I would like is a method to "kill" a commercial I don't like. I see a commercial I don't like-- *BOOP* it's gone, the hypothetical system remembers I've killed it, and it makes sure I never see it again. I don't even mind if the information about which commercials I've killed and how many times I viewed it before I killed it get sent back to the networks or some information clearinghouse. I don't even mind if they replace the commercial I killed with *gasp* another commercial (which I haven't killed yet).
I would especially like if they make the aggregate information available to the public. It would be interesting to me to see statistics on how many times people will watch a good commercial before they kill it because they are tired of it. And to see product categories or advertising agencies whose commercials get killed the most quickly.
In general, I accept advertisements as the devil's due for broadcast channels.. but I would like to see technology relieve some of the annoyance factor.
> Add to that the PAID product placements like Coca-Cola being
> drunk by a given character. There are many of those.
I'm always amazed at how quickly people lash out against product placement in television and movies. As long as the content itself is not being compromised for the sake of placing a product (ie. the plot of the whole movie is to save the world from the evil OpposingProductX) or is blatantly interruptive ("Hey guys, whaddya say we all head over to the restaurant for a tasty glass of X, the flavour that..."), what's the big deal?
Everyone buys things. Everything these days comes with some label attached to it. Why is it that people will sit on their couches drinking Coke(tm), while simultaneously complaining about how awful it is that their movie character is sipping a can of Coke(tm)?
The entire concept of seeing a labelled product somewhere in a movie as offensive? Please.
Using duration as the metric for the skip isn't going to be very precise, because break-lengths are only somewhat predictable.
Typical length for TV (and radio) commercials in the US used to beSo a fair rule of thumb for today -- but probably not tomorrow -- is that one commercial lasts (:05 X n) where favored-values for n include 3, 4, 6 and 12.
But most breaks include multiple commercials (number = i) in a mix of lengths so commercial break lengths (which are set for network programs by the net and during local origination by the station) vary from a singleand -- whoops, another catch -- when the hour hits, US stations must do a "legal ID" -- which means call letters + location (in some mix of audio and video). I'm not sure there's an FCC standard for mimimum length of ID, but as a practical matter it's hard to do one in a manner intelligible to the viewer in less than 2 seconds or for the listener in fewer than 3 seconds (ya gotta' allow for announcer- or engineer-reaction-time + time to actually voice the ID -- for example, "W Z Y X, Des Moines"). So break length on the hour can be thought of as the sum of (((:05 X n) X i) + id_length)].
[this sig has been trunca
Wasn't it several years ago that the cast of Friends each were getting paid $1 million per episode?
That's $6 mill per, by my math. That'll certainly up the costs of TV these days. Ask a TV actor from the 80s if they made even 1/10th of that.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
God I hope ad product placement explodes. Imagine a Trojan vs. Lifestyle ad campaign war on, say Charmed.
many years ago and way back when, there was an FCC requirement that there was to be a minimum of a 1 second fade to total black leaving the program and going into a commercial and the same was to be applied leaving the commercial and going back into the program.
Of course this rarely happened due to the fact that college kids were running the place as interns and there was a *lot* of screwing up..
Anyway, I had been working on a circuit that would monitor the video stream for the fade to black and would mute the volume automagically on live TV. (This was about 20 years ago though.)
You would be amazed at the information that's encoded into a video stream that you can't see without special equipment. It's neat as hell. We used to send stuff out, like text messages in the VBI that only other techs could get. The FCC would have shit if they had known what was going on back then..
Anway, The point is that you can design circuits that KNOW (or are supposed to know) when commercials start and end and take action based on that. But it's not fool proof, it depends on the broadcaster sticking to the rules, and they rarely do...
IANAL, NDIPOOTV (I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV).
As it stands, it looks like automating the skipping process is what takes away the substantial non-infringing use claim for customers. (Of course, this is likely to change rapidly in the existing legal environment, but that looks to be the case for now).
The court should have recognized that being able to detect commercials automatically in the first place shouldn't have been possible at the accuracy the devices are capable of, unless broadcasters are themselves infringing on both laws and FCC regulations. For example, some of these devices detect differences in the peak or mean amplitude of the audio track. Others detect digital labeling originally used internally by the broadcast studios, and so are not just detecting commercials, but public service broadcasts, tests of the EBS, and station identification.
That last would not be necessary if local stations didn't sometimes broadcast 10 or 12 commercials in a row, broken up by a station identification segment to give a superficial legal defense against violating the FCC rulings.
That being the case, it's like a drug dealer going to court for taking a bad check. Their own violations mean they should not have standing to bring the lawsuits. Unfortunately, their own violations have been largely ignored by the system, which is often reluctant to enforce the law, and powerless to give FCC rules the full weight of law.
Who is John Cabal?
(At the risk of being redundant) How about playback edit scripts for homebrew PVRs? A user could record a show straight through, then download a little script (a couple kilobytes) which instructs the PVR which parts of the recording to play back. It could have some kind of hash of one of the opening frames so that the system could synchronize the script to the show. /. style moderation. You then go downwload the file, watch your show with the commercials cut out, and then rate the quality of the edit. I think the rating system would prevent the entertainment industry from flooding the system with crap, and I think there would be, for lack of a better term, karma whores who would provide the scripts. (It really wouldn't require much more effort than watching tv).
How would they be distributed? Enthusiastic users would watch the shows when they were on, or shortly after, and note the exact time that each commercial break starts and stops. They'd then post these to a forum, where there could be some form of
I have been testing 64 bit Linux on embedded EFI Itanium servers for the last year. I haven't seen any problems what-so-ever. Its just a pre-boot environment.
--dubman
Wasn't the lawsuit against SonicBlue/Panasonic about the ability to share your shows over the internet? While Comercial Advance is a hot issue, it's a process that has been around for years before pvr's in vcr's.
The issue the studios had with the replay was that you could "distribute" your shows to any other replay anywhere in the world. That's what they didn't like.
Holy shit, my dad reads Slashdot?!?
networks say that the 30-second-skip is an infringing device under the DMCA because there is no substantial non-infringing use for a thirty-second skip ahead
It wasn't the 30 second skip that got RePlay in trouble, which is why the new RePlays (55xx) still have it, as do many VCR's. The older RePlays (50xx) had a feature called commercial skip, that by hitting a checkbox before playing the show would automatically skip commercials. It uses periods of fade to black to determine what it skips
I have a 5060, and I don't use comercial skip all that often, because it tends to confuse fade-to-black as part of a show, like those location screens in law and order, with commercials. It works well for shows that don't do that, however.
I have blog like everyone else
Hey you are on slashdot. If you haven't noticed the site is overrun by teen and twenty-somethings that smoke a lot of weed. Just cause your old, square self can't understand doesn't mean you should be nasty (or try to stop us).
Open Source Sushi
Pay attention: for U.S. programming, there is typically a 1/2 second transition period between the show and the commercials, where the screen is black and the audio silent.
My VCR uses this indication to detect, mark and skip commercials. Look for the feature "Commercial>>Advance". After recording a show, it rewinds the tape and scans the show looking for these blank intervals. When it finds one, it rewinds the tape and marks the spot. Upon playback, the VCR fast-forwards between the marks.
Being a mechanical system, it is not 100% accurate, but it's pretty darn good. The blank intervals are typically not seen during scene changes (those are shorter) but I have seen a false-trigger where the picture is dark and quiet at the same time.
How on earth can the device detect the start and end of commercials?
My best guess is that it looks for tell-tale signs such fading scenes followed by a still frame. I would imagine if they use this method it will be horribly inacurate and trivial for TV broadcasters to circumvent...
I am a die hard Tivo user, (I think all TiVo users are actually Die Hard users). My Tivo ship s 30 seconds ahead too with a single button press on the remote. It is not a feature that TiVo ever even mentions or supports, but it is there. You simply have to press SELECT PLAY SELECT 3 0 SELECT on the remote, (providing that you have unlocked the backdoor), Backdoor Unlock Fact Sheet. Then your skip to end button acts as a 30 second skip instead. No need to add software or get out a screw driver. Works Great! Doing it this way, I believe, obsolves the TiVo manufacturer of the liability.
Is it more like a VCR system where you have to fast forward and then curse when you went too far, and then it uses scene changes to go back?
My Sony VCR has a "Commercial Pass" button. I press it once when a commercial break starts. Then when I watch the fast-forwarding tape and press the button again when I see the show start. It then scans back a few seconds. Makes it much easier to catch the start of the show without manually rewinding it again.
But why hasn't this feature, labeled Commercial Pass, been the subject of such scrutiny as ReplayTV's feature?
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Actually, the first thing that comes to my mind is "PSYCHIATRIST!".
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Yeah, but what does it do when you're watching an info-mercial? ;)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Using mfs_ftp on my tivo I had noticed that Tivo is tracking where commercials start and end, but they don't do anything with it, at least, they don't let the user make use of it. Perhaps they use it to track what commercials are skipped for marketing? Who knows.
f set>O ffset>f fset>f fset>O ffset>f fset>f fset>f set>>
Here is an example of the data I extracted:
<SubObject type="RecordingPart" id="Part">
<Begin>0</Begin>
<CommercialSkipOffset>34</CommercialSkipOffset>
<CommercialSkipOffset>380957634</CommercialSkipOf
<CommercialSkipOffset>-1583980897</CommercialSkip
<CommercialSkipOffset>-115893406</CommercialSkipO
<CommercialSkipOffset>-330779455</CommercialSkipO
<CommercialSkipOffset>-1888323867</CommercialSkip
<CommercialSkipOffset>-676939267</CommercialSkipO
<CommercialSkipOffset>1555865978</CommercialSkipO
<CommercialSkipOffset>451082653</CommercialSkipOf
<CommercialSkipOffset>49814</CommercialSkipOffset
<End>1767130</End>
</SubObject>
The goal of spam is to sell you stuff, and the goal of commercial advertising is... to sell you stuff. Seems like we've got a large body of research on the subject that could easily be leveraged against television commercials.
And I'm not talking simple Bayesian only, here. The graphical nature of commercials could allow you to do all kinds of rich things, like correlating certain kinds of motion, the number of cuts (commercials have far more cuts than entertainment programs), as well as the closed captions.
This was actually suggested to me a few years ago by a friend, when he learned that I was working on a neural network spam filter. I just might be interested enough now to try it out.
Does anyone have information on extracting the closed captioning information from a television broadcast? Can a video capture card do it?
Perhaps if everyone starts skipping over the commericals television will change.
... oh, wait...
I can see it now. A form of television where you pay a monthly fee to watch and get commerical free tv. Wonderful, high quality programing, both educational and entertaining. Our minds will be expanded, our horizons broadened. Our children will be enlightened. The level of "culture" in our society will rise to new highs. There will be a great renewal in the arts.
Dare we say another Renaissance?
No longer will the programing be dictated by Madison Avenue. No longer will we be forced to wade through the sewage spewing out into our living rooms. Garbage aimed at the lowest comon denominator because there have to be a certain number of the right kind of people watching who will buy product-X.
Mindless.
Boring.
Crap.
I can see it now, a reliable, high quality signal that never fails. That carries content on demand. A beautiful picture, high definition, perfect concert quality sound.
Perhaps instead of being broadcast the signal will even come into your house on some kind of cable
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
>>>Your only license it to watch it.
If you bought a video tape or DVD legitimately, you're also allowed to dispose of it at your discretion, give it away as a gift, loan it to friends, relatives, co-workers.
Copyright holders get upset when you alter and/or make copies of what they claim as their intellectual property and sell those copies without their consent.
There's still some debate as to whether the legitimate buyer is allowed to make one or more backup copies for his own personal use. I've yet to hear of legislation or precedent eliminating that option.
What's perhaps most interesting is that advertising in the form of product placements used to be much *more* blatant than it is today. For instance, "soap operas" are called such because they were sponsored by soap companies. You could identify not only a particular show, but an entire genre by its sponsors. ;)
What we seem to be experiencing today is akin to Ralphie in "A Christmas Story", when he uses his Little Orphan Annie ring to decode the message "Drink More Ovaltine." Thankfully, today, we experience significantly *less* overt product placement. Perhaps we're more sensitive to it these days because it's less common?
Well, there's a much better solution, but enough people don't seem to care to put the effort forward.
If I see ads on the screen during the program, if I notice product placement, or if anything else sneaky is going on, I simply change the channel. After I see the same thing on the show more than once or twice, I stop watching the show permanently. If I see it happening commonly on the same channel, I remove the channel from my line-up, and don't ever watch anything on that channel again. Problem solved, don't you think?
I've even sent letters to my service provider, letting them know I'm not willing to watch TV stations that have distractions during the shows, and asked them to consider removing those channels that are doing it. I also told them that I watch very few channels already, and if just a couple more switch over to this infuriating method of distraction, I will cancel my service completely. Hey, I can rent movies and most of the better TV shows, so why should I put up with such crap?
Now, I know they aren't going to rearrange their lineup just for me, but a few dozen people send in letters like mine, and I guarantee they will begin putting lots of pressure on those stations. They all live or die depending on what channels major companies decide to carry, so they can exert a huge ammount of pressure if they are motivated!
One last thing... I have long-since stopped using any products that are in annoying ads like this. I used fedex quite a bit until I saw Castaway... I immediately switched to UPS. Pepsi seems to be the single worst offender I can think of, so I'm drinking Coke now (you mention Coke product placement, but I have yet to see any).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Knoppix with Myth TV pre installed/configured.
One could say that is very, very close to what you asked for.
The only way for stations to solve this commercial dillemaa is this.
Make it really, really easy to download commercials - then before every show show "trialers" for a few commercials related to the show. If these are done well enough then people would watch instead of skipping, and go somewhere else to view the full versions of thigns they liked.
I LOVED adCritic when it was free and I could look at whatever commercials I liked. Broadcasters (including cable on over the air stations) are really missing out by not making it so that I can look at a commercial when I want to, instead of when they think I should. As it is even if skipping is not in a product I can and do just leave or FF anyway, since I have no idea anything of any interest may be shown.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is silly. So you are going to drink Coke until you happen to watch one of the movies that they paid to be in? Will that be the point of personal insult? In reality, with almost no exception, ALL large corporations do this. In fact, we can generalize a bit here and say that with almost no exception big corporations will do whatever it takes to make more money. Thats the kind of thinking and management that got them there. Thus is the nature of capitalism, but it has its pros and cons just like any system. We accept (or so is the assumption) that the American Dream we can see wafting across the yonder horizon is worth being annoyed by marketing at every corner and shat on by large corporations that control our government.
-ashot
We have a regular VHS recorder that skips commercials on playback. I suspect it uses that nasty characteristic of commercials being louder than the shows to do so. The obvious way to combat it is not to blast the volume on commercials, which would actually make me more willing to tollerate them anyway. Don't go to far with commercial skipping, or they'll really start to integrate the advertising into the shows... or lobby to take away your rights. Sure, it's fun to skip and laugh today.
--
Power to the Peaceful
DCI(Discovyer Communications, Inc. is owned by Liberty Media Corp. (49%), Cox Communications (25%), and Advance/Newhouse Communications (25%) own DCI. http://www.hoovers.com/discovery-communications/-- ID__43731--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
How good can it be, if it isn't HD?
Id like to see a fast forward feature that uses a split screen (or pic-in-pic) to show the current frame and also the images about 15s ahead. With this I could move very quickly and position a video at any point I wanted to. It might even show 3 points, now, +15s, +1m, or the distance ahead might vary according to the speed of playback (the faster it goes, the further ahead it shows.)
No, it's the lesser of two evils actually. Pepsi ads have been quite annoying for quite a long time. Perhaps Coke will get real aggressive in the future, and only then will I change preference.
No, ALL corporations do not. Many have remained clear of product placement, popup adverts, and other annoyances.
Yes, well in that equation of how many people will buy more of their product, there is going to be that black dot, which signifies people that are currently buying their product, that will stop buying their product if they resort to slimy and annoying tactics. If we're lucky, that black dot will grow to the point that it's no longer profitable to do slimy things. Of course, that takes restraint on the part of the public, and since people are more than happy to shop at the same Wal-Mart stores that put them out of work, and are exploiting people, somehow I don't think we'll see too many people like me.
It's said that those who are "reasonable" and accept their environment can never affect change. It is only those who are "unreasonable", and refuse to accept their envirnment that ever cause change. Now, I don't live by that saying by any means, but I certainly do refuse to accept the crap that corporations are trying to shove down everyone's throats these days. You can say that "everyone is doing it" all you want, but being complicit is just as bad as doing it yourself.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The scooters weren't Mitsubishi's - they were Vespa's, an Italian scooter company. Italian food, Italian resturant, that was the connection they were tryng to make.
They did work the Mitsubishi sponsorship in though - the first episode has scenes of the chef driving around in his Mitsubishi SUV, a later one has him screaming at the tow truck driver who is towing it away for being illegally parked.
I have blog like everyone else
I got rid of it when I got the Tivo some years ago, and I don't remember who made it. I notice that eBay has a passel of Panasonic PV-V4022s for sale that the seller claims to be commercial-skipping. Or search for vcr and "commercial skip" in the descriptions and a bunch of others turn up.
My approach exactly. I think of it as the uncommercial. Piss me off, and the only way you'll ever hear from me is when I politely inform you that there's no way in hell I'll ever buy your product.
As for that crap at the bottom of the screen - I change the station whenever those come up. Lately, I find that the OFF button is the button of choice.
Commercials are already well-done eye-candy. If you really want my time and my dollar make a commercial based on facts, not appeals to emotion. Tell me why your widget is better than the competition's. Give me a good price. Show me reviews from credible outlets. Tell me about your warranty and customer service.
The alternative is what you claim to want: cars with mountains and american flags in the background. Pretty people/famous people hocking the newest RonCo piece of crap, etc.
Fact based advertising was the norm until newspapers began printing graphics in the late 18th century. Google's text ads are nothing more than a revival of an old and much more informative form of advertising, and because these are words we can challenge them on false-advertising laws thus keeping everyone honest.
The free speech guarantee of the First Amendment does not extend to commercial speech such as begging or advertising.
Nationally sindicated broadcasts have blocks of time for local commercials. The National show does not control the local blocks of advertisement. Are they still coherent copyrighted work? I should be able to skip them.
What kind of geek doesn't have the exact model number memorized?
Bonus points if you can tell me the exact version of TRON it's running...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
AFAIK they all work by detecting whether the channel logo is on the picture. During commercials it usually is not.
I have a ReplayTV 5100, a few weeks ago it upgraded itself overnight and now has the Show|Nav feature.
I just wanted to mention that I still don't have to press any buttons - the main post seems to imply manual interaction to get the feature to work.
That's simply not the case.
I'm a 2000 man.
I just OD on sugar and black out until the commercials are over.
-Rich
Product placement isn't neccesarily bad; it's lame to drink a generic drink labeled soda. It's only when they go out of their way to fit the product in that it sucks.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
That's what I was trying to say... "If I notice" any product placement, I stay away from the show, the channel, and the product. That means it has to stand-out, and be blatant.
However, I'd say when anyone uses the phrase "product placement", they are alway, only talking about overt attention-grabbers, that were sponsored by the company. Otherwise, it doesn't get your attention, and it's not a very good ad for the product.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant