Posted on 03/20/2012 8:25:24 AM PDT by LibWhacker
How much would you pay to watch a replay of a great play, or skip a bunch of television commercials? And should you have to?
Those are a couple of the questions raised by a newly surfaced Microsoft patent application.
It’s called “Control-based Content Pricing,” and the basic idea is dynamic pricing of video content, based on the preferences of the user at any given moment — essentially setting different prices for different functions of the TV remote.
Here’s an excerpt from the filing.
For example, if a user initiates a navigation control input to advance past (e.g., skip over) an advertisement, the cost of a requested on-demand movie may be increased. Similarly, if a user initiates a replay of a sporting event, the user may be charged for the replay control input and for each subsequent view control input. This provides an advertisement revenue model that reflects user viewing choices and selections during playback of requested on-demand media, and enables targeted advertising and media content delivery, while maintaining consumer privacy. …
Control-based content pricing allows for user-personalized pricing where price is a direct function of user viewing interaction. Further, the pricing may be expressed as a debit function, such as a debit to receive an on-demand movie, or as a credit function, such as a credit to watch an advertisement or infomercial before receiving the on-demand movie. The credit and/or debit functions of the pricing may also be based on view control inputs, such as content navigation inputs, received as user-input commands initiated with a remote control device.
The patent application, filed in November, builds on an existing patent that was already issued to Microsoft last year.
Also interesting: One of the inventors on the Microsoft patent, Kevin Carle, now works at Google’s YouTube.
Update: A Microsoft spokesperson says via email, “Microsoft regularly applies for and receives patents as part of its business practice. Not all patents applied for or received will be incorporated into a Microsoft product.”
So in other words someone found out how to charge me even MORE money for my cable service.
If it wasn’t for my wife and son I would have cancelled it years ago.
If it wasn’t for my wife and son I would have cancelled it years ago.
I personally cannot stand TV and when it does go on I just leave the room. The family is used to my “anti-social” tendencies by now. I just wish they could walk away from the damn thing too.
On the other hand charging someone for wanting to skip the commercials. Hmmmm that kind of sounds like a TAX on cigarettes and see what happened there less and less people smoke or can afford to do so. So maybe they can make TV watching so expensive that people give it up and discover the wide outdoors and that there really are people called neighbors.
Try it!
Television content is offensive fluff and worthless anyway.
The only thing my wife misses is 'Dancing With the (Pseudo) Stars' and that can be obtained off the net moments after it airs.
Back about fifteen years ago? there was a court decision that provided that cable users could use splitters in their homes for as many TVs as they wanted (Calif, anyway)...at that time the cable companies supposedly had vehicles crusing the hoods to detect how many TVs “the folks” had in their homes on one account—they already had long begun charging for each tv/splitter you admitted to...
As you see, they soon got by that court decision by making it necessary for EACH tv to have its own cable box, etc.
Ya just cannot keep a good crook down!
;)
Semper BS!
*****
This is all about removing the fast forward button.
What happened to having tuner cards in our computers?
It seems all inovation these days is about removing individual control.
I’m just a quick decision away from canceling cable in the first place. This would certainly end it for me.
Technology can be used for evil! Of course I do wonder how commercials help their companies since I don’t watch them.
Technology can be used for evil! Of course I do wonder how commercials help their companies since I don’t watch them.
I generally do the same thing, I just leave the room. I do have exceptions for Family Guy, Alcatraz and the Walking Dead. Other than that I wouldn’t miss it all.
avoiding commercials is to be expected in this day and age.
Once again MS fails to understand the consumer. Then again Madison avenue has lost touch with straight men years and years and years ago.
We only intentionally watch commercials at the SuperBowl, although this year's crop was pathetic.
I personally cannot stand TV and when it does go on I just leave the room.
####
You are a better man than I.
Sure I leave the room, but leave behind a bitter string of profanities and sharp, acid commentary, at what I just was subjected to from the PervertHomoCommieBox, upsetting the whole family.
Family conseling might be in our future. LOL.
Bwahahahaha! I don’t watch TV. Bite it Microsoft. I feels great to be free.
Its a patent app, not a product spec.
Only means that interested carriers would pay MS for the
technology should they wish to proceed with product.
Speaking for myself I could not imagine life without
NHL Center Ice and CBC (HNIC w/ Ron, Don, Elliote and the crew).
The “free market” would deal harshly with this idea, if it is required to operate in the free market.
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