Commercial skipping killed by new device

Posted Apr 20th 2006 10:48AM by Chris Thilk
Filed under: Television, DVR

A new device that's been developed by Phillips could mean the death of commercial avoidance for television viewers. The company has created a device that would stop the viewer from either fast-forwarding or even changing the channel while a commercial is on. It would use flags embedded in the broadcast to identify programming that' is commercial in nature and simply disable those options while they're on. The functionality would be built into the television set itself and would, it sounds, override any DVR that might be attached to the TV. In order to "educate" viewers that their fast-forwarding machines aren't malfunctioning, one suggestion is that a message could be displayed on screen informing them that the functionality has been blocked. Viewers would then have the option to interactively pay for the rights to get their commercial avoidance back.

The part I have the biggest problem with is the disabling of basic channel changing capability. It's one thing to say that viewers can't fast-forward but another entirely to take away the option of changing the channel. That's well over the line in terms of intrusiveness. Changing the channel during commercials is something everyone does when they're, say, watching Alias on one channel and catching bits and pieces of the Cubs game on another.

Reader Comments

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1. This is an appalling idea which seems like an attempt to make an end run around the basic responsibility of the advertiser: earn the attention of the viewer. It is true that DVRs make it easier to skip commercials. I admit that even as an advertising blogger I often skip commercials with my TiVo. But I do stop when I see something interesting even if I've reached my 'quota' of bloggable spots for the week.

Ultimately I agree with Steve Hall here. If this is tried it will fail. Consumers have too many other options and a trip to the refrigerator or the computer will effectively make this device useless. More likely, consumers will refuse to buy televisions so equipped.

Posted at 1:23PM on Apr 20th 2006 by David Vinjamuri

2. How much would anyone dislike anything they would be forced to wear, or eat, or date? How could anyone with supposed marketing sense, think not allowing a person to continue experiencing the freedom not to be commercially hit on so to speak, not realize how much the forced viewer would learn to resent then reject the advertised product and it's company?

Posted at 1:42PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Adan Lerma

3. There is no way this will be successful unless all TV manufacturers enforce it, in which case I cannot see the consumer buying new TV until their old ones break down. So in that case to sell new TV's the TV manufacturers would have to set of EMP fields to systematically break the old TVs and that would just be wrong. Good luck getting Americans to buy that crap.

Posted at 2:34PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Joe McNeely

4. Who would buy such a thing? The idea sounds great for advertisers, but sucks for consumers--the people who would actually be buying the product. It looks like Phillips didn't use its brightest bulbs for this product development.

Posted at 5:08PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Robin Kavanagh

5. What a pathetic idea! Apparently, they haven't learned anything from the online ad industry, who repeatedly took steps to circumvent user preferences and even security settings in Windows, and ended up with plugins like AdBlock for Firefox that just block their domains altogether, and don't even allow innocuous static banners through.

In the fight of consumers vs. crapvertisers, bet on the consumers; if nothing else, there are more of us, and we've got smarter engineers and programmers in our ranks :)

Posted at 6:29PM on Apr 25th 2006 by Hoqenishy

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