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Philips Patents Technology to Force Ad Viewing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pure-evil dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for technology to force viewers to watch the ads in a program. Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished." From the article: "Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers' who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."

4 of 823 comments (clear)

  1. DVDs anyone? by amigabill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished.

    DVDs did that years ago and I've hated it the whole time. Especially after I've waited for it for previous viewings of a movie, and I'ev already decided to or not to buy that thing or watch that other movie coming soon (ie. 4 years ago) to a theater or DVD near me. Is this prior art, or do they have a loophole aroung it? Though I wouldn't mind if the threat of lawsuit over such a patent prevented any media distributors from doing any mroe of this really annoying crap.

  2. yes, amazing how far we've come... by MrFebtober · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...Anybody remember those Magnavox TVs that actually detected when a commercial was playing and attenuated the volume to make them less annoying? I believe it detected the audio compression technique that commercials use to seem louder than the actual program or something like that. Now that was technology for the consumer.

  3. Re:Still fine by me by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 4, Informative
    And if it prevents you from switching channels? Return it as defective.

    According to TFA, it does (or can be used to) stop a viewer from changing channels during commercials. (And if the show you want to watch starts during a commercial break in the one you're watching now? I guess that's tough luck.)

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  4. Re:offensive by back_pages · · Score: 5, Informative
    Someone has probably already said this but you can flash the ROM on your DVD player and skip those inane advertisements. It'll also unlock the region encoding and you can play pirated movies from Bangkok or some crap like that, but I've never been interested in that.

    Mine was really easy. I had to open the case and read the model of an IC inside it, but most of the time that step is unnecessary. I just hunted the web for the flash program, downloaded it, burned it's contents to a CD, inserted the CD in the DVD player, clicked a menu or two, waited 10 minutes, and that's it.

    Now I can skip ANY FLIPPING JUNK they put at the beginnings of the DVD. That stuff drove me completely nuts, plus I found it ethically uncomfortable to cope with it in order to watch the movie I bought. It took me about an hour for the complete project (opening the case, reassembly, searching, burning the CD, and burning the ROM) and it has vastly improved how I enjoy my DVD player.

    Just a thought.