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TiVo-Like Service Coming To Australia

Posted by timothy on from the escape-the-primetime-shackle dept.

rosy writes with good news for Australian television watchers: "CNET.com.au is reporting that a TiVo-like service will be available in November this year. Dubbed ICE ("Intelligent Content Engine") and developed by Peter Vogel, the technology will be built into set top boxes and personal video recorders to skip ads or lower the volume, view electronic program guides, etc. The article states that the service will cost $2-3 per week with the service launching initially in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong."

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. who wouldn't pay for no ads by BoFiS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd pay that just to have advertisements taken out of my daily TV...infact it's one of the main reasons I like the ReplayTV 4000-series, you can just have it skip the ads all-together.

    And for those of you who enjoy commercial breaks so you can run and get more chips or ice cream...remember, you can always just pause it!

  2. Re:Smarter than a TiVo... by rjch · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Of course, Austrailia has many fewer total over the air TV stations than the USA does thanks in part to its smaller geographic size, so this service is much more practical there than it is here.
    Spoken like someone who has no idea where Australia is or has the slightest idea how big it is.

    Australia is geographically the same size as the United States, even though it has 1/10th of the population. The fewer number of television stations (3 commercial, 2 government-owned and in some places 1 community) is driven in part by govenment regulation and in part by economics. A country of ~20 million people cannot support the same number of commercial stations as a country of ~200 million.

    Pay TV only arrived in Australia 7 years ago and has only been accessible to most for the past 3-4 years. The ratings for Pay TV are pretty poor, since the commercial free-to-air stations have first pick at a lot of things - sport in particular - to protect people from "having" to pay for TV.