Commercials, DTV, and SageTV

[korben_dallas]

Saw this one:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1847

No fwd'ing through commercials or changing the channel while a commercial is playing. Philips admitedly says they believe the public will be unhappy about this technology. But with the push for encrypted recordings, which surely will be big when DTV becomes recordeable on a mainstream PC, there is no reason why they wouldn't throw this one in there as well.

So my questions are:

1. Do you think SageTV will ever get a mainstream digital tv recording capability?
2. If yes, then how would you react to anti-commercial-skipping being a requirement for digital recording?

[dbfresh23]

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.

I disagree with this statement from that article. Sure broadcasters would love it, but once people find out about it then do you think they'll be buying a product that has it? Thus manufacturers would hate it. I wouldn't doubt seeing the EFF take action against something like this as broadcasters have no right controlling how we view our content as long as we view it legally.

[erik]

Who do you prefer to have this patent?
A patent troll with political connections that gets it into a standard or a CE company that admits it is a feature people will not like and is willing to listen to the EFF?

[dblaine2]

Have you guys seen this? What a incredibly outrageous move!

I don't believe this would affect the Sage community but poor folks without DVR would be screwed.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1953769,00.asp

* merged *

[RedCoat999]

I didn't read that particular article you quoted, but I did see a response from them saying their intent is for cable companies to have "pay-for-no-commercials-during-movies" or "free-movie-but-with-commercials". And you would be asked before it started.

Thats not really that bad, but far from the "we take control of your remote and TV watching during commercial time" dire warning that some people are talking about.

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by dblaine2

Have you guys seen this?

Yep - Last week.... http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17477

[blade]

Seems like a very stupid move by Phillips, but I've said before as more and more people start to use PVR's commercial skipping will become a bigger concern.

If fewer people watch commericals the networks won't be able to charge companies as much for airtime because they'll have a smaller audience. If the networks aren't making as much in advertising they're not going to pay the studios as much for the shows or movies.

Lost ad revenue also factors into DRM to an extent. Content providers don't want us downloading off the net because they lose revenue from DVD sales and the networks aren't going to pay as much for a show if their audience is drastically reduced due to people watching downloaded copies because it's going to reduce the amount of ad revenue they earn.

The entire lockdown of content is about preserving the current business model and protecting their sources of revenue. Most businesses are slow to change, hopefully they'll eventually get their act together and find a way to maintain their profitability without screwing over the end user.