Slashdot Mirror
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 seeing this a few days ago and thinking they couldn't manage it, but slashdot has broken all coding records and implemented it already ;)
The one thing thats worrying me though is that I'm a paying member here on slashdot, so theres a bug somewhere still.
Ahhh well, if slash can do it, so can I - heres the posting I made in the previous article:
Forget muting commercials, this is TV - when the ad break comes on, will I be able to switch channels?
What about the advertising on the other channels that I'm missing.
What if I am flicking around the channels (from a sanctioned spot) and happen upon a commercial, will I not be able to continue to the next channel?
liqbase
The thing I don't like on TV are all the repeats... (or "dupes" as they're known in the trade).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Yes, I would much rather pay a fee to be allowed to change channels. What makes them think that we will be happy with either option?
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Will I still have to watch the ads?
Seriously - its a good thing that there's a patent on this. The more heavily patented (with associated royalties, etc) something is, the less likely it is that industry will actually use it...
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
OK, so that's Philips and Sony off the list. Who's next?
Someone finally found a way to make to make people go back to reading books. Good work, guys.
I'm off to patent magazines that refuse to let you turn the page for 30 seconds if there's an ad on it.
No, we couldn't, because the content provider will set the "ad" flag during key parts of the actual program, which you don't want to miss.
OMG Clockwork Orange jokes.
'Nuff said.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
1) Forbid viewers from switching channels during commercials.
2) Forbid viewers from turning off their TV's.
3) Get promoted to CEO of Network 23.
4) Rule the World!
Bwahhhahahahahaha!
Quick, someon patent a technology that makes me unable to get up and take a dump while commercials are playing. Maybe a special chair that's required while watching TV. When the commercials come on, metal rings bolt my arms and legs to the chair so I can't get up. Then, a little robotic arm comes out of the headrest and holds my eyelids open so I can't close my eyes. The volume on the TV is autoatically turned up so that I am unable to think of anything else while I am bombarded with the new Chili's advertisement.
Man, I'm gonna be rich...
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Yes but can it keep me from turning the TV off and reading a book instead?
Fuck you. The commercials are the stupidest part of my television-watching experience. Everytime a commercial break happens, I feel my intelligence is insulted. The idiots ensure that the commercials are as annoying, as loud, as irritating as possible in the chance that I might pay attention and buy whatever it is they are pushing, kinda similar to when you visit some neighborhoods in Detroit, and the pimps and pushers start trying to hawk their wares to whoever will listen.
Best example: Matthew Lesko, the screaming asshole who hawks the book full of gubbermint programs to help you go to college, get a job, get money to pay your bills, etc. This idiot runs around in a coat covered in $-signs, looks like Waldo of "Where's Waldo" fame, and SCREAMS ABOUT HOW MUCH HE'S GOING TO HELP ME FIND MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO GET A CIRCUMCISION OR BOFF MY WIFE NEXT WEEK OR USE CAT FECES AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL SOURCE.
Second best example: Recently, Burger King started a commercial campaign to promote a new chicken sandwich. To do so, the commercial starts this slow music with lyrics that go like this:
Big.... buckin' chicken...
You are big... and you are chicken...
Big... Buckin' chicken...
The commercial features some clown in a chicken suit with a saddle on its back and another idiot riding in the saddle, probably a midget. 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. On my wife's days off, it was a race to see who could grab the remote the fastest to at least mute the idiocy that was that commercial. Since then, I've vowed never to eat at a Burger King again.
So, now they want to extort money from me to have control over an appliance I've paid upwards of $400 to $1000 US for? Fuck you, you assholes. I'll toss the bleedin' thing in the garbage and start pirating even *more* movies than I do from USENET. It's getting so that I really don't need the TV any more.
Every month when my cable bill comes in, I pay a fee, I should be able to time shift and skip any commercials I want, I pay nearly $80 per month for all the bells, whistles, and channels I get and by god I feel like that gives me all the right I need to skip the stupid commercials.
Product placement is gonna get more and more common and intrusive as the old way of just showing commercials becomes less and less profitable. Wait till people stop mid show, hold up a bottle of dawn and smile and say how much they love how it makes their hands feel. What's old is new again.
--- www.f-theocean.com
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!
New Patent on Slashdot Forces You to Read Articles Twice (if you're lucky).
Advertising that will make your potential customers hate and resent you! Who wouldn't want that?
As with some aspects of Hollywood and DRM, it's just a patent to shore up a dying economic model by attempting to use coercion rather than choice. If implemented, it will simply create a huge amount of ill will and do nothing to change the fact that the traditional broadcast TV model is on the way out. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before one of the industry's tame politicians introduces a bill saying that not watching adverts is unpatriotic and must be made a criminal offence toute suite. Then we can all see grannies being carted off to jail for skipping the latest news about fruit-flavoured douches and even shinier floor polish.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
When did you ever own the content displayed on your TV by broadcasers?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
With TV viewership declining and TV execs scrambling to find a way to retain the remaining viewers and attract more, I cannot think of a better strategy. I can imagine the discussion now..
"Should we try to improve the quality of the programming? No screw that, let's roll out a few dozen more reality shows and then really piss them off by locking their TVs during commercials." Or maybe it is a threat: Amercia better start watching more TV or next we will start selling TVs that bitch slap you every time you get up to head to the kitchen (although there may be an innovative weight loss plan there)
I guess the TVs that add this patented feature will target the same customers who purchase Windows Vista. You know the kind, they feel as though what they currently own has way too many features and capabilities and are eager to pay more for something that includes a lot of technical restrictions on what they can do.
Finkployd
A few months after Philips are manufacturing these things, you know that Daewoo will start buying the same chipset. One quick firmware hack later, you will have a telly that automatically changes channels for you when the adverts come on. Or a DVD+RW recorder that automatically puts chapter marks fore and aft of every piss-break.
..... come on. If there is ever a reliable way to distinguish advertising from editorial content {such a thing actually was nearly mandated in the UK once but was rejected}, then it will end up being used in ways that benefit the consumer more than the advertiser.
I mean, seriously
Also, I don't see what there is to grant a patent against. Either there's already a spec for an "advertisement" flag, in which case making use of it to enforce viewing of advertisements should be obvious; or there isn't a spec for an "advertisement" flag, in which case introducing such a flag would be obvious. Patent application is invalid on grounds of obviety either way. Ting! Next, please.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
The technology and the patent for sure it real, but there is no reason to be upset. Philips (I think?) have no power of broadcasting per se and the technology will only be in their box. Their idea is that various companies will bundle their box with TV sets or special offers and that the customers will recieve the box for free. If they do not like the "feature" they can always buy another box which will allow them to zap away from the ads. Of course, in the future this patent might prove to be worth Gold if the broadcasters themselves finds a way to enforce everyone to include this technology on their boxes.
Who's talking content? We own the hardware. That includes the remote and the controls on the TV.
Who owns my remote? Me, or the content provider? If I want to change the channel and watch something else, that's my right.
Until my TV comes with a EULA stating that I am not buying the hardware, and that I'm just licensed to use the hardware however Fox network sees fit. And that is the day I stop buying TV's.
I would really like to know exactly what this technology is about because I see it in two contexts, one annoying, and the other evil (and maybe not legal?).
I can't tell from the article if this technology relates to constraining a viewer to watch commercials when watching a pre-recorded show, i.e., something on a Personal Video Recorder (like a Tivo), or if this is something that prevents a viewer from channel surfing while a channel breaks for commercials.
The former (pre-recorded show viewing) is something I've heard about for a long time, for example I've heard Tivo has played with instantiating "popup" ads if you fast forward through commercials while watching a recorded show. Regardless, while this is annoying, I guess it's their call -- but for sure, it'll cut back on how much I'm watching -- it's already borderline for what I find tolerable with encroaching advertising (product placement, etc. -- anyone see the pandering "sidekick" product placement in Tuesday's Gilmore Girls? For Heck's sake, it was actually written into the script!).
However, if this is about locking in to a station during commercial breaks, I would be (and I assume the viewing public) outraged! How dare they. Aside from the egregious nature of this, I can't imagine it would be a legal tactic. Certainly any potentially "competing" channel would be up in arms over something like this, unless of course there is future collusion to ensure commercials are all aired at exactly the same time, thus attenuating the incentive to surf during commercial breaks.
Anyone know the answer to exactly what this technology is?
Not quite; instead of giving users more freedom by expanding entertainment devices into general-purpose computers, they're now trying to restrict freedom by locking down computers so that they're not really general-purpose anymore, but are instead controlled by DRM. For example, see this, Treacherous Computing, Intel's VIIV DRM platform, the Broadcast Flag, Microsoft Windows Media Center that restricts what you can do with the recordings, the fact that cable-ready HDTV tuners don't exist because they're not allowed to decrypt the signal (they'll eventually come out, but they'll only work with locked-down, Treacherous systems), etc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is a reference to the classic (and surprisingly good) and short-lived TV show Max Headroom, where televisions didn't have an "off" switch.
Oh, I think it was "30 minutes into the future", wasn't it? Anybody out there whose memory wasn't shot off in the war?
I guess disabling the off button will be the next patent from Phillips.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
...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.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
and we are being forced to watch it again
-- lol pwned
If I am flipping through channels and find myself unable to switch away from a commercial, or turn up or down the volume, I will use the big red OFF button to solve the problem. And if that is also disabled I'm likely to put my foot through the display and never use the thing again. Just an FYI.
My book, podcast
On the other hand new technology, which hasn't percolated down to Mom and Pop level yet but soon will will allow all the viewers to skip the ads, not just the tech savy ones. The advertisers will say, with good reason, why waste money on TV advertising when no-one watches the ads. The TV stations will lose advertising revenue and have less money for programming and we'll all end up with some sort of pay per view or endless reruns of the I Love Lucy show.
I'm no friend of the advertisers, I'd love to watch ad free telly, in fact I mostly do which is why I don't begrudge the UK TV license fee. But you really can't expect advertisers tro pay for your television if no-one is watching their ads because of new technology.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Alex: No. No! NO! Stop it! Stop it, please! I beg you! This is sin! This is sin! This is sin! It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin!
Dr. Brodsky: Sin? What's all this about sin?
Alex: That! Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music!
Dr. Branom: Are you referring to the background score?
Alex: Yes.
Dr. Branom: You've heard Beethoven before?
Alex: Yes!
Dr. Brodsky: So, you're keen on music?
Alex: YES!
Dr. Brodsky: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps.
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If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
--Anthony Burgess
The Admin and the Engineer
My monthly cable bill is for what, exactly?
My book, podcast
And those of us that pay cable bills? We're not already paying (what I feel is) too much for what we get?
I hear that Slashdot has a patent on a technology that forces you to read the same articles over and over again.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I did notice that with my Toy Story 2 DVD years ago, I think I got around it by selecting the appropriate chapter in the menu (was watching on PC). You can also fast forward those commercials
which is totally what she said
Each day, as I read more and more about how content providers are trying to control our view habits, I am reminded of the old Max Headroom show where Corporations ruled and Ratings were more important than anything else.
We better prepare to get off the grid!
Blanks Unite!
But how will we know when and where to unite if we're not connected?
Here's a scenario. A small chiild wakes up in the middle of the night and walks into the living room where the parents are watching TV. While there, a Girls Gone Wild ad comes on the screen, which the parents decide they don't want their child to see. With this technology, they'd be screwed. One would hope the power could simply be turned off, but what if that feature is disabled too? One would hope the TV could be unplugged, but what if TV manufacturers start installing batteries or capacitor-banks to provide just enough juice to run the unit for a single commercial?
There is a rule in user-interface design that says the user must always be in control. Unfortunately, the quest for bigger profits seems to be redefining who the user is, taking control away from the consumer and giving it to the producer.