Slashdot Mirror
TiVo-Like Service Coming To Australia
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."
While Vogel didn't reveal much of the technical detail behind how the ICE system works, he did state that it was backed up by live monitoring -- so presumably he'll be looking to hire people to watch solitary TV stations 24/7 -- to enable the system to react automatically to ad changes, or late running TV programs.
If spams are anything like ads, maybe it's time someone looks into doing something similar (live monitoring) for spams.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
The addition of volume-leveling and ad-skipping features seems to imply that this service is going to be closer to the original ReplayTV units rather than TiVo units... ReplayTV of course at one point in time was a sister company of the Rio brand of MP3 players and always has had a reputation of being the "screw the system" DVR as opposed to TiVo who co-operates with advertisers and broadcasters.
Personally, I'd love a feature to automatically lower the volume on ads, to save me doing it manually.
I have noticed a disturbing trend on British cable TV channels where adverts are considerably louder than the main programmes, presumably to try and grab your attention. In reality, it's just annoying.
I normally channel surf or watch five minutes of a rolling news channel anyway, although now a lot of channels seem to have syncronised their ad breaks to try and stop you doing that. I expect such a feature would come under a lot of fire here (and probably in Aus too) from the very people who make it necessary.
One question though: how does it detect adverts?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm in Australia, and to be honest, we dont really have that much free to air television. We have 5 main stations. One of them is the ABC (government funded), SBS a more multicultural tv station (partly gov funded I think) and three fully commercial stations. The ads we have are mostly on the commercial stations.
I dont think Australians are real heavy tv watchers, as pay-tv here is no where as popular as it is in other parts of the world. And if people dont want ads, they buy pay-tv services. I wouldn't pay a few dollars a week to record/filter ads from free to air tv. I mainly just turn it off.
So even thought I could see that this would have a market, I don't think it will be as big as Tivo in the American market.
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
While it would be nice to think that a similar service might be implemented here in New Zealand, the chances are virtually zero for one reason:
Copyright.
The TV broadcasters consider their program listings to be their intellectual property and that they're protected by copyright.
Similar copyright cases (both here and in Australia) have been won by the companies which publish other collections of data such as telephone directories (example)
Anyone who attempts to publish TV program schedules without the permission of the broadcaster (and they charge like wounded bulls for giving such permission) will be set upon by multiple teams of corporate lawyers.
Of course someone intent on providing a scheduling service for a Tivo-like system could always try and buy the rights to publish those listings but I bet you any money you like that those rights would come with the caveat that ad-blocking was forbidden. After all, advertising revenues are the lifeblood of a free-to-air broadcaster so they're not about to allow someone to provide a service that cuts ads are they?
Personally I think someone should fight the broadcasters over their copyright claims -- after all, copyright is supposed to protect the presentation, wording and format of data, not the facts on which that data is based.
If I create listings from scratch and simply include the program title, genre, start and finish times then that information should not be covered by any form of copyright.
But, fighting the corporate sharks costs lots of money so I doubt we'll see a test-case here in NZ anytime soon.
not a chance - Murdoch or Packer will buy it before its wings dry. Then its just another outlet for Fox or 9.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Peter Vogel built this awesome instrument (with his business partner Kim Ryrie) called the Fairlight. It was to the best of my knowledge, the first sampler and can be heard on dozens of albums, particularly from the eighties. Even with the advances of audio technology in the last 10-15 years, I still drool over the Series III.
:)
http://www.ghservices.com/gregh/fairligh/
In any case (and back on topic), I hope he has better luck business wise this time. As was typical with great engineers with good ideas at that time (think Clive Sinclair) they never had the acumen to cash in on their great technology. Those MBA graduates do sometimes come in handy