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New Patent on TV Forces You to Watch Ads
WebHostingGuy writes "A patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says researchers of the Netherland-based consumer electronics company have created a technology that could let broadcasters freeze a channel during a commercial, so viewers wouldn't be able to avoid it. Philips acknowledged that this technology might not sit well with consumers and suggested in its patent filing that consumers be allowed to avoid the feature if they paid broadcasters a fee."
I remember in the early 80's here in Canada, Rogers Cable offered "Pay Television" whereby you pay them for a cable hookup, and enjoy television without commercials... that's why it costed money. The rabbit ears hookup only showed commercials for the sake of covering broadcasting costs.
What happened? How incredibly greedy can people become? Television shows make millions, and cable providers make millions, etc. etc.
I remember they once talked about showing ads while shows aired, an almost Truman Show-esque "Joey drinks Coca-Cola" while watching Friends.
And now they wonder why people pirate television programs, movies, games, music, etc.? Because it has become not only inconvenient to watch, use, or play due to the number of advertisements in everything nowadays, but we are PAYING for them.
Just like buying clothes at the Gap, and billboarding their logo to everyone, what's next? Car Insurance companies will require you to paste their logo on your car? Or how about when you see the dentist? Will they make you wear a hat pointing downward saying "This smile brought to you by Dr. Dentafark".
Now possibly moving outward to an off-topic, but people question why youth today are so different, have a look at how many advertisements they see, and wear every day!
Why even bother with TV's anymore. My 24" monitor works great as a TV. I watch everything off of DVD's or downloads now. No commercials, no DVR rental fee, no cable fee.
I was visiting the US recently (from the UK) and tried to watch TV. I just couldn't bear it - the adverts were just so frequent and intrusive that I had wandered off and started browsing the web by the time the show came back on. And these guys want to make that *worse* by removing the option of just flicking channels? Stupid in the extreme.
I work from home, usually leaving the television on, tuned to Spike TV, since there's like a 5 hour marathon of ST:DS9 and ST:TNG reruns, which seem like heaven when compared with the rest of the afternoon fare. Spike ran this commercial at every break during that 5 hour marathon every weekday for the entire months of January through March.
Being in a similar situation, I certainly understand. I too work from home and I need some video noise to help me through the day sometimes. But I do it in a different way. I have a second monitor which is routinely playing TV shows. I've been re-running entire series (Did all the Star Treks last year, on the 3rd season of Northern exposure right now).
I like the noise, but commercials would actually distract me from work. No way I'd put up with that. I recommend you try getting commercial free versions of your favorite shows. I won't comment on where to get them...
...when these TV shows show up on DVD, will they have commercials embedded in them that can't be skipped over? It seems like the next natural step. Is this then going to migrate to web content? Sounds like a kind of DRM-in-disguise, only instead of keeping you from altering the content, they're keeping you from watching the content the way you want.
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