loyalguard

I just saw this at Daily Tech:

Cox to Introduce Anti Commercial-Skipping Technology

Here's the gist:

[Rant ON]

Now this just gets my dander up! When I move back to the U.S. next year I will be a Cox customer again and as I have a job where I travel alot and work kooky hours, DVR's, TiVO, etc. have been a god-send. I can watch the shows I want to see when I want to see them and commerical free. Well, maybe not for long. Even though this seems to be isolated to Cox and these ABC channels, I would imagine this trend will spread once an increase in revenues can be figured.

Now, I remember the "hey days" of network TV. Your'e watching the Muppet Show or the A-Team and a commercial comes one...well, you either sit though it and be bedazzled by all the fantastic things to buy, or, you go to the kitchen and get a snack. No big deal! Enter the reign of cable/subsription TV. All these new channels and show...and best of all...no (or few commercials). The whole point of cable TV was that now you are paying a monthly subscription, you don't have to sit through commercials. Sure, if you're watching your local NBC, ABC, or CBS affiliate you still have to watch the commercials but we already had to do that and at least we don't have to mess around with bunny ears or re-aligning the atennad on the roof with the strange dial-device on top of the TV. Then, slowly but surely, we see more and more commercials on cable TV. So, now we are paying for TV and having to watch commercials...how did that happen?

TiVO to the rescue...my shows, my time, no commercials...ahhh! Now with Cox's latest deployment, I can see the freedom DVR's bring start to erode as well. It is bad enough you can't skip the commercial under their new system BUT THEY WON'T EVEN LET YOU CHANGE THE CHANNEL! Are you kidding me?

I see this as a very negative development. Yes, it seems localized right now but I think this is one of those trends that could spread very quickly.

[Rant OFF]

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|TG| LoyalGuard

Apophis

I wonder how this will affect TiVO units. There's a big misconception that a DVR is a TiVO and vice versa. Granted, a TiVO is a DVR but a DVR is not a TiVO.

This might be a good thing for TiVO and OEM MythTV appliance providers.

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

Twisted_Firestarter

This will never affect an unbranded TiVo unit. TiVo's primary revenue stream is customer subscriptions and selling aggregated customer data. They could generally care less about Cox's on-demand services or catering to them. Not to mention that if you have a TiVo you don't need on-demand services in the first place...

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Twisted Firestarter
a.k.a |TG| Harkonian

loyalguard

I agree with both Apo and Firestarter that this shouldn't affect TiVO, and in fact, it should help them. I am concerned that the TV networks and major cable providers may find ways of making this spread to any device attached to their systems...whether they be their own PVR/On-Demand or TiVo.

It has pretty much convinced me to only go TiVO when I get back in order to avoid any forced commercial shennanigans.

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|TG| LoyalGuard

WhiskeySix

I also wonder how it's disabled?


I have Comcast, and although there's a skip-back-15-seconds button, there isn't anyway to skip ahead 15 seconds! Or so I thought

After I upgraded to a universal remote (harmony 550), I discovered that the HD-DVR comcast uses DOES have a "skip-forward-30-seconds" command!! It's just disabled/not-mapped on the standard-issue remote that comes w/ the DVR!

A simple tweak to my universal remote's configuration and viola!! It's a thing of beauty to be watching a show and <tap><tap><tap><tap><tap> commercial skipped

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Steeler

Wasn't Tivo planning on airing still-frame ads during fast forward? Did that idea die?

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Banyan

Yeah, this won't affect DVR's at all, just users of on-demand video directly from Cox.
I heard about that still-frame advert idea, and frankly, could care less. My main desire is to get back to the show I'm watching quickly and as long a I can still skip past the commercials in a matter of seconds and get back to the show - that's all that matters.