backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 56 comment(s) - last by thilde.. on Apr 21 at 10:50 PM
No skipping or fast forwarding over commercials; not even changing the channel is allowed

Since the arrival of TiVo, people have been enjoying features such as pause, rewind and fast forward when watching TV. Nowadays, these features are standard on many digital TV tuner boxes. Despite their success, broadcasters are becoming increasingly annoyed that TV watchers are able to simply skip over commercials entirely -- even though this can be done simply by changing channels.

Philips has announced that it has invented the means to circumvent the skipping of commercials by PVR devices. By using signals embedded in broadcasts, Philips is able to lock a PVR from fast forwarding over the commercial or even prevent a viewer from changing the channel. The technology, says Philips, will stop a user from changing the channel, forcing the viewer to watch a commercial until it was complete. The only problem is that after the commercial is complete, if the viewer changes the channel and lands on a station in the midst of a commercial, the viewer may get locked in. The fact that users may not be able to even change their channels has many furious. Philips admits that this technology may not bode well with viewers.

Most tuner products use technology from Philips, and in many cases, Philips designs whole tuners. If Philips decides to offer this new technology at no additional cost, the majority of the PVR market as well as broadcasting stations would not hesitate one second to put the anti-commercial-skipping technology to use.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Forced to watch a commercial?
By ummmm yeah on 4/19/2006 2:38:47 PM , Rating: 2
Ok, if this is implemented I will either have to get very knowledgable on TV's and learn how to remove this without destroying a TV or stop watching TV all together.

"Let the customer watch what he wants." .... wait a minute ... "Force the customer to watch what we want."




RE: Forced to watch a commercial?
By ZombieRitual on 4/19/2006 2:41:39 PM , Rating: 2
This is just outrageous, are they going to make it so I can't turn off the TV in the middle of a commercial either?


RE: Forced to watch a commercial?
By TomZ on 4/19/2006 2:46:33 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, and they are working on another invention that locks you out of your bathrooms and refrigerators when the PVR is playing the commercial. Since there is nothing else useful to do during a commercial, you're forced to watch it. :o)


By crystal clear on 4/21/2006 2:29:00 AM , Rating: 2
I have a solution for You-Have a laptop at yourside and Blog in/out on this Website.Keeps you busy & not watch those commercials.


RE: Forced to watch a commercial?
By sircuit on 4/19/2006 2:58:24 PM , Rating: 2
Theres no way anyone will buy a device with this technology. If we don't buy they have no choice to remove it, easy as that. If not then they'll just force alot of people to exclusively download torrents to watch what they want without dang commercials.


RE: Forced to watch a commercial?
By Decaydence on 4/19/2006 9:12:11 PM , Rating: 2
This is a good way to cut PVR sales by 90%. I pray Philips puts this in all of their products so I can have a hearty laugh reading about how badly they have shot themselves, and the companies using their technology, in the foot. Philips makes garbage anyway.


RE: Forced to watch a commercial?
By Furen on 4/20/2006 4:55:23 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, of course... Considering that corporations have the US congress (and the presidency) in their pocket I can just see "intellectual property" legislation that requires that every system that requires a tuner to use one of these (or a similar one) to "protect" content providers from alterations to their products. It may sound too far-fetched but considering that we changed our copyright laws so that Disney could keep milking "Mickey Mouse" for another 20 years--err... I mean, so that our copyright duration was the same as other countries--I believe that the time of government protecting the rights of the consumers came to an end.


PVR
By OrSin on 4/19/2006 2:41:06 PM , Rating: 2
Not everyone would include this technology. The fact is the one company that doesn't use it will be alot more popular then the ones that does. Replay was force to take out thier commerical skip but just replaced it a 30sec skip. Even if that was taken out it was becuase it only real purpose was to skip commericals.

No way this is going to cut it. I could see the first time you watch a show you have to watch the commerical but what if I want to watch single part again. I have to got through 10 commericals breaks jsut to watch the end? Never going to happen. If manufacture was stupid enough to do this then HTPC will really start taking off. And i know people ahve them now, I even do but most people that even own media center PC don't really use them as HTPC.




RE: PVR
By meson2000 on 4/19/2006 2:45:41 PM , Rating: 2
Well, PCI based TV Tuner cards could easly have this tech built into them too. That means that your HTPCs could be forced to watch the commericals too.....


RE: PVR
By peternelson on 4/19/2006 2:51:27 PM , Rating: 2
"If Philips decides to offer this new technology at no additional cost, the majority of the PVR market as well as broadcasting stations would not hesitate one second to put the anti-commercial-skipping technology to use."

At no additional cost?

Even then, who does this benefit?

NOT the viewer and NOT the manufacturer of the PVR.

It only benefits the advertisers and the stations who derive income from advertising.

WHO is it what decides to buy a PVR. Actually its not the advertisers but it is the VIEWER.

If there exist products on the market with and without this technology, which will the VIEWER choose to buy? The one without it. This idea is totally lame. And in all likelihood, Philips will have to price the restrictive tuners as costing more because of additional components to decode and implement the locking.

In any case if people record and save the stream to disk, surely they can just use software to jump into for fast forward the stream at any point anyway. So it could only effectively stop ad-skipping in live broadcasts not saved ones.

The only way this could work is if the ADVERTISERS sponsor it by paying to GIVE AWAY PVRs incorporating this technology. Few people will refuse a free PVR, and they could put their own branding on it.

However I don't think that is very likely.


RE: PVR
By aGreenAgent on 4/19/2006 3:03:14 PM , Rating: 2
Nah - the point is that Phillips tuners are used by a lot of companies already.

In theory, Phillips then becomes the preference among broadcasters. A little lobbying by the broadcasters, then soon all PVR's will use Phillips tuners.

It's not that this one step will help Phillips, it's in the long run.


RE: PVR
By TomZ on 4/19/2006 4:27:55 PM , Rating: 2
How to broadcasters "lobby" Philips?


RE: PVR
By Decaydence on 4/19/2006 9:19:00 PM , Rating: 2
We shouldn't be worried about Philips and their influence on manufacturers, we should be worried about the lobbying of our Government by broadcasters, content creators, and others; they already have enough money in play in Washington. We all know that recording and playback of anything is something that could easily be the target of legislation, especially with something like this coming down the pike. They will reason that it is a good compromise and we all know how much politicians love to push "comprimises" that favor their owners, oops, I mean campaign contributers.

This type of situation has been in their crosshairs before, don't believe for a second that it won't be again.


You don't own TIVO or DVR, do you?
By Dfere on 4/20/2006 2:26:25 PM , Rating: 2
Understand that your provider often requires you to have a device that someone builds for them or they have manufactured with whatever technolgies they choose. I have Dish, and they provide the tuner (at a charge of course) that I have to buy in order to get their service.

They want advertising money, so they require the use of this new tuner , then I cannot skip comemrcials anymore. Unless I want to hack my tuner.......(Completely different discussion). No laws, no intellectual/constitutional issues. Simple business model. BAM. DONE.

The only choice would be cable or dish for me for entertainment.... and who has more than one provider of either in any given city right now? Not me. So how can someone fight this when their only choice is to buy cable or no cable. I thought that all cities were mandated to allow for more than one cable provider to address choice issues like this, but this has not happened in Ohio.


Oh I can see it now
By Regs on 4/19/2006 8:47:33 PM , Rating: 5
"My 12 year old son could not change the porn channel and he ended up getting a girl pregnant" "I'm suing!"




RE: Oh I can see it now
By themusgrat on 4/21/2006 8:52:44 PM , Rating: 2
LOL. Mw too, might use that one myself, hope you don't have a copyright on it. :)


Consumer Education Required
By TomZ on 4/19/2006 2:44:04 PM , Rating: 2
"Inventions" like this help remind me that we have to be careful about educating ourselves as consumers of these devices, and making sure we don't accept these types of "features" if we don't like them. Ultimately, we as consumers get to decide which products live and die in the marketplace.




RE: Consumer Education Required
By peternelson on 4/19/2006 3:01:44 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, we who ARE educated in these matters would not choose products with it.

Those who are NOT educated about it will buy them. They take them home, plug it in, then have to either call the manufacturer helpline or take it back to the shop or RMA it, because they find it is faulty. What I mean is there is an intermittent problem where the channel change or fast forward buttons on the remote stop working.

Given the low margins on high-tech products, this extra hassle for the manufacturer and retailer should act as a strong disincentive to its roll-out.

The only place I could see it being adopted is where the broadcaster OWNS and supplies the reception technology. In the UK that would be SKY with their set top boxes for satellite, or Telewest/NTL cable company who also supply their own set top boxes. SKY also plan to do tv channels over IP network in future because they bought a big ISP Easynet. Set top boxes for that too might contain this blocking technology, but then it wouldn't be using a tuner at all would it? I think Philips are onto a loser here.


You have to admit one thing though
By johnsonx on 4/19/2006 3:18:28 PM , Rating: 2
Here's the problem:

TV is paid for by advertisers. Advertisers pay because they think their message is reaching viewers. As more and more people use PVR's, fewer and fewer commercials are being watched. If this trend continues, there will be far fewer advertising dollars available to pay for TV.

What's particularly perverse about this is that the bigger hit a given show is, a higher percentage of the viewing audience will be recording it, thus skipping commercials, and therefore the commercials that pay for it will actually reach a smaller percentage of the audience. The only time I end up watching commercials is on shows I only sometimes watch; my favorite shows are all TiVo'd, and I refuse to start watching them until they're far enough along so that I can skip all the commercials (or I pull them off the TiVo, edit out the commercials, and burn to a DVD+RW to watch in the bedroom). I doubt I've ever seen a commercial during Battlestar Galactica for example.

I'm not saying Phillips new tuner is the right idea (indeed, I think it's awful), but let's at least admit there is a real problem here. Without big advertising revenue, we're going to get more and more shows where the show itself is essentially a big commercial (like The Apprentice, many game shows, or many of the shows on Food Network and Travel Channel... not saying many of those aren't entertaining, but let's admit what they are), and fewer true dramas with high production value.




By peternelson on 4/19/2006 3:38:35 PM , Rating: 2
Here in the UK, we pay the so-called "TV license" fee which funds the BBC.

Also don't forget that TV has other ways to generate money eg selling books to go with your show, selling DVD boxed sets of "Lost", making money through quiz show dialins at premium rates, promoting and merchandising show characters as toys and collectibles or even spin-off video games.

I do see your point, but there is also "product placement" within movies and shows. eg a man drinks from a can of "Coke" or uses a trendy Nokia phone in the "Matrix", or a character namedrops "Starbucks" into the conversation. This is all worth money whether obvious or subliminal.

It may be that people skip the overt ads, in which case some of that budget will move to street billboard hoardings which are harder to "channel zap".

Also there are complemenary new ad revenue streams for example teletext or "red button interactive" ads, or banner ads on internet TV.

I don't think we will escape ads just see them in different forms.

Besides "advertising gives choice" ie some ads are fun to watch, or provide useful product information about what's available.


Amazing...
By sonoran on 4/19/2006 3:22:56 PM , Rating: 2
It's amazing that someone at the company even thought this was worth spending R&D money on. I just can't see any informed consumer buying this thing. Of course it it were somehow foisted on an unsuspecting public, the next gadget developed would be a device that removes the signal that tells this thing when a commercial is playing. :)




RE: Amazing...
By Griswold on 4/19/2006 4:59:29 PM , Rating: 2
The problem is, how long does it take for other companies to think this is a good idea? First there is one, then two, then four...