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Time Warner Cable Patents Method For Disabling Fast-Forward Function On DVRs
antdude writes in with a story about a patent that won't have DVR users skipping for joy. "Time Warner Cable has won a U.S. patent for a method for disabling fast-forward and other trick mode functions on digital video recorders. The patent, which lists Time Warner Cable principal architect Charles Hasek as the inventor, details how the nation's second largest cable MSO may be able prevent viewers from skipping TV commercials contained in programs stored on physical DVRs it deploys in subscriber homes, network-based DVRs and even recording devices subscribers purchase at retail outlets."
Here's the actual patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8180200.PN.&OS=PN/8180200&RS=PN/8180200
I thought slashdot inserted those logos automatically when you typed digital" as a keyword? And speaking of newbies:
>>>It's summer, it's endless summer...
It's called Endless September not summer. The term "september" refers to the point when a bunch of college kids got internet accounts, and started spamming a bunch of messages to Usenet forums w/o regard to polite netiquette. The summertime used to be a haven from all the college kids (since they were home w/o a connection).
The "eternal" refers to when people started getting internet at home. Then it was as if September never ended... a continuous supply of clueless newbies.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Once you have the commercial cut point markers, you can program the player to do anything you want. You can either skip the commercial upon seeing the initial cutpoint or disable navigation controls entirely.
Yet another patent on the obvious with plenty of prior art.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Ok, let's switch goalpoasts. We'll now consider the cost of Doctor Who, instead of BBC's overall offerings and costs.
Doctor Who is watched by, conservatively, 7 million Britons (more for premiers, finales and specials). It's also redistributed to 50 other countries. The US viewership peaked at around 1 million, and Australia was achieving about the same viewership in 2005, so let's be again conservative and say that those 50 other countries add about half of Britains viewership, bringing the worldwide total to around 10 million viewers. At that rate, it costs $0.30 an episode per viewer, or about $4 a season. Your $400 is off by 2 orders of magnitude. Even if we double that, and give the BBC a nice, chunky profit, you're off by a factor of 50. Note that my estimates are conservative; I wouldn't be surprised if the worldwide viewership for Doctor Who was closer to 15 - 20 million.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face