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Google Researchers Create TV Audio Analysis System
segphault writes "Ars Technica reports on a paper (PDF) about ambient audio analysis authored by Google researchers. The system described in the paper can effectively determine what television show a user is watching just by capturing a short audio clip. The paper explains how a regular computer microphone can be used to record an audio clip that is then converted into a statistical data summary and transmitted to a remote server which matches the clip against archived data in order to ascertain which TV show it is associated with. Apparently, the system is fully viable, and other kinds of ambient noise don't negatively impact its accuracy. The paper also describes how web services can provide contextually relevant information based on a consumer's television viewing activities."
There's a system in the UK where you can go out clubbing, here a song you like, dial a number and hold the phone out to the music and it'll text you the name of the song. Assuming they don't hire scores of extremely knowledgable music buffs with quick fingers, surely it's a very similar system. TV dialogue may be less distinctive to the human ear but to a computer it just means a larger amount of data to search through.
Not sure about PPM's tech, but Nielsen's A/P meter does exactly what TFA describes. That's the only way Nielsen Media could roll out Time Shifted Viewing at all (disclosure: I work for them). To say that Google "created" it is an insult to the people I work with every day.
I see a patent suit in Google's future. As much as I hate patents and like Google, I'd like to at least see some full disclosure here. To (erroneously) state one one hand that they invented the technology and then admit (on page 4 of the PDF) that they intend to compete with the actual inventors, they're begging to get sued anyway.