Posted on 04/20/2006 6:26:51 AM PDT by Xenophobic Alien
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In this era of easy ad skipping with TiVo-like video recorders, could television viewers one day be forced to watch commercials with a system that prevents channel switching?
Yes, according to Royal Philips Electronics. A patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said 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.
The pending patent, published on March 30, said the feature would be implemented on a program-by-program basis. Devices that could carry the technology would be a television or a set-top-box.
Philips acknowledged, however, that the anti-channel changing 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.
On Wednesday, company officials issued a statement that noted the technology also enables the opposite: allowing viewers to watch television without advertising. The intention was never to force viewers to watch ads against their will, the company said of the technology.
"We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads," the company stated. "It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."
The company also said it had no plans to use the technology in any of its products.
Philips wanted to provide the technology and seek the patent only as part of the broader developments within the industry, Philips spokesman Andre Manning said.
Wait. Do you realize if Hollywood actors lose their influence on America they might go door to door to persuade people to listen to them as LaRouchians and Jehovah's Witnesses do?
If Philips execs love advertising so much, they should set the standard. FORCE them to have their logo on their foreheads. Then they can be up front with their ads. If they are going try and froce this technology down our throats, force them into the tatooist's chair for the above mentioned treatment. See how they like it.
Its scary that Advertising & Marketing can control our society as much as it does and wants more. How did Entertainment become so important in our lives?
And based on that decision, TiVo sales slide down dramatically.
LOL - I would rather have a Jehovah's Witness come to my door than Tom Cruise!
With those I've tried, the fast forward button still works. At 5x speed, they're over in no time.
There is an industry solution...
Charge viewers a fraction of a cent for every commerical they click off. Just like your phone may contain services like "3 way calling" that you get billed for because you haven't hung up the phone ("just flashed it") before starting a new call. In a digital world they can be aware of such events.
Nickel and diming the public is how money is made.
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An alternate solution. As we go to widescreen tv, there will be a large single "gutter" or 2 thinner vertical stripes surrounding the program for "older" format programs (think of the opposite of letterboxing).
They could fill this space with "banner" ads like websites have or the scrollby information on FOX/CNN/MSNBC... There could ALWAYS be a commercial onscreen if we don't look out.
But, I really don't doubt it.
As Gen-X gets old, you JUST may see this. Oh, and they'll take their billion dollar bonus NOW for selling the naming rights on their forehead.
And with my channel surfing habits, and after hitting 20 commercials in a row, I'd wind up with a $500 a month bill! It would actually be worht the wait to buy the DVDs and avoid cable. But what if broadcasters use this technology? In the near future, your analog TV won't work anymore without a digital converter box so regular broadcast TV could have the channel-lock-on-commercial feature, too.
Only during the Superbowl
Of which I use neither, nor would I... and I'm sure third party alternatives will be on the market.
The potential exists. But I don't see it as any sort of definite future.
Queen Victoria wanted television so her subjects could see her. Jenkins was working on the technology in the later part of the 19th century. He got an operational model going by the 1920s. His version had the spinning discs. Not saying he had the best solution, but he was working on it for decades. By the way, what we call television he called radiovision. Televsion was through a wire (what we would call cable television) and he could not afford high enough grade wire to implement it. He also had a concept called radiomovies which might be analogous to where are theaters are going with broadcast events and digital transfer of movies to theaters instead of distributing film prints.
He also perfected a mechanism for movie projectors to keep the film from flapping around and sold his patent to Edison.
The Nazis also worked on television and broadcast the Olympics, Nuremberg Rally, and as the war began used the programming largely for programming for officers and wounded soldiers. The propaganda purposes were not lost on them.
Sounds like more and more desperation.
Perhaps we have a commercial free future.
The dinosaurs can die fast enough.
This is bull. Have you ever just been going through the channels, not watching anything yet, but just trying to find something to watch? Have you noticed how many channels are running commercials at the same time? With this setup, you'd never get anywhere. You'd be stuck on a channel you didn't want to watch because a commericial was running on it. You might get stuck on the next one and the next one too.
If I can't change channels because a commercial is running, I will make note of that commercial, write to the sponsor that I will not be patronizing them, and not buy their product. I will not be forced to watch commericials before I even have the chance to choose actual programming to watch. But give me a free choice to watch or not to watch when the advertisers are hustling their crap, and I'll have a completely different attitude.
I felt the same way...now the internet robs all the time that used to be taken by television.
Can't you see it? A bunch of old Gen-Xers walking around with "This space for rent" on their forehaeds? they will be whores for the almighty dollar.
This was disscussed over at /. ( Philips Patents Technology to Force Ad Viewing) yesterday.
In order for this technology to work, they will need to send a flag to the DVR to tell it commercials are coming on and to disable the fast forward/skip feature. And at the end of the commercials they will need to send another flag signalling the end of the commercial break.
If anything, this will make it easier to skip commercials automatically during recording. At least on consumer built DVRs. Now if the public really hates this idea, why would anyone buy a DVR with this skip preventing functionality? I can see someone like TiVo not incorporating it.
But on the other hand, the broadcasters/advertisers could go crying to Congress and the courts and get commercials included in the DRM/DMCA making it a felony to buy/build/program a DVR type device to ignore the commercial flag.
It will be interesting.
Go out and get your HDTV tuner PC cards now that don't supports the proposed broadcast flag for HD, and build your own systems. And when the commercial flag comes out, the code will be modified to auto skip the commercials.
For every fix the broadcasters try to make to force this, some snart boy will figure a way around it.
In some cases that is branded so that footage cannout be reused on other networks without attribution (but I have seen some burn it out with a black square).
Also when you are in a bar or restaurant, they casual viewer will still get hit with the logo.
What is infinitly more insulting is when such branding is done to a DVD you have purchased. Like the Rocky & Bullwinkle tv episodes. Or the Something Weird video releases on Image Entertainment (normally IE releases are fine product).
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