Why is there no system (yet) to enable a cable subscriber to block the ads coming into or out of the cable box? There is TV ad-blocking now, but it works only for internet-streamed commercial TV channels received through a browser.
Why would ad-blocking at the cable box not be technically analogous to internet browser ad-blocking? Obviously, putting in substitute signals could be done, but why not just muting and/or going to black for the duration of the commercial?
If, hypothetically, ESPN knew that Comcast was offering its customers the option of not seeing the commercials, ESPN would demand even more than it already does for Comcast to carry the ESPN channels on Comcast’s cable systems. The cable channels depend on the advertising revenues to meet their budgets.
By the way, I was able to find, via an Internet search, a way to program my Comcast remote control to add a thirty-second skip feature, so that if I’m watching a recorded program, I can skip through the commercials. Thus something like Jeopardy! (nominally a thirty-minute program) can be seen in about 20-22 minutes. The broadcast and cable networks know that people do this. For this reason, they’re paying a lot of money for programs that people will want to see live. A couple of years ago, the NBA signed a fat new contract with ESPN and Turner Networks to broadcast basketball games. And just yesterday, the mixed-martial arts company UFC was sold for $4 billion. These are the types of events that people will not want to watch on tape-delay, even if they have to suffer through commercials.
But my Ad-block on the internet does not depend on my ISP (which happens to be the cable company) “allowing” their ads to be blocked, does it? Offering customers the option?
I’m not sure what you mean. I have ad blockers on my Internet browsers, but then I control the computer including what programs run on it. I have no control over the software on the cable box, so the only way I can see for ad blocking to work there would be with the cooperation and support of the cable provider. But that’s going to piss off the content providers.
So does work when you are running something like SlingTV or Apple TV. I thinking not because you give up a certain amount of control when you sign up for the service.
Such things have existed, both for real-time muting and in VCRs that would theoreticall pause for the duration of commercials, giving you a pre-zapped recording. None worked very well since the detection was easily fooled. (And, IIRC, channels not only fine-tuned the commercial markers away but inserted bogus ones during program display, so that you’d lose 30 seconds of program.)
They worked by detecting the brief drop to black between program and commercial; that was iffy except on the meticulously-run Big 3. Simply running the commercial video right into the program video eliminated the cue. The other cue was the (usually) much stronger ad signal levels, but that was even easier to tweak and finally done in by regulations that limited ad volume to some percentage of the program volume. (Which in turn was easy to game by making sure there was a GUNSHOT! or SCREAM! or CRASH! within a few minutes of the COMMERCIAL!)
There’s probably no reliable technique for zapping and skipping commercials on cable, short of a very powerful “fingerprint” scanner with a continuously updated database. Good luck.
This will work when watching live TV, too. Pause the program and go make a sandwich. When you come back, resume the program. When the commercials come along, skip through them 30 seconds at a time.
But it only works for a live program until my tape-delayed viewing catches up with the live program. So assume that making a sandwich takes three or four minutes. That’s only long enough for me to skip through one commercial break or so. For the rest of the program, I can’t skip them.
So, as I understand it, then, there is no embedded signal coming down the cable that can be read as the start or stop of an ad, so nothing for an ad-blocker to use to recognize a commercial. Right?
And when I play a Youtube video, there IS a signature in the ads that AdBlock can recognize. How hard can that be to defeat?
Based on what Amateur Barbarian says above, no, there is no signal that can be read as the start or stop of an ad.
But even if such a thing did exist, where would the ad-blocker be running? It sounds like it would need to be running either in the cable box or on the TV itself.
Couldn’t it be between the cable box and the TV? If it senses a commercial, it could use IR or whatever to mute the TV or change the channel.
When I worked for ReplayTV in the early 2000s, we implemented an ad skip feature. The only way we were able to do it was to watch for one or more black frames in the video stream, which appeared before the commercial block and again after it. It worked reasonably well but there were occasional cases where we wouldn’t detect a commercial, or worse, incorrectly think part of the show was a commercial and skip it. This didn’t happen very often though; the black frames were pretty reliable indicators.
–Mark
If you’re using an HDMI cable to connect the cable box to the TV, a technology called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection may prevent you from mucking with the program like that. As I understand it, the idea is to encrypt the signal so people can’t record HD channels.
RIght, that’s what I referred to upstream.
For the non-TV-techy, there’s a difference between a frame showing a black room (which still has some signal content) and a “black frame,” in which the signal goes completely flat. Mostly older viewers will remember that there was often to always a brief flash of this “black-black” between the program and commercial, and sometimes between commercials. It is relatively easy to detect and use.
When the commercial-skip tools and auto-zap VCRs came along, it was easy to use simple logic of timing and black-frame detection to blip commercials 30 seconds at a time. It didn’t take long for advertisers and then broadcasters to hit the roof and start screwing around, until now you have seamless transitions into commercials, odd commercial timing and length that defies easy prediction… and, in the early days at least, deliberate insertion of black frames into content that would false-trigger these systems. So you’d go to watch your show and not only would the commercials survive to some degree, but you’d lose 30s snips of the show, often at critical dramatic points.
One of the long-term effects of all the zipping, zapping and muting was that the design of commercials changed so that audio was of little importance in carrying the message, and that any 2-3 second clip carried the main message. So even diligent muters and zappers got nearly as much exposure as slack-jawed couch taters.
Blipverts, as I said.
Do what Mom and I did for Grey’s Anatomy etc: begin taping the show at the typical time. Begin watching the show at quarter past the hour. You don’t usually catch up to the live broadcast that way.
For editing out commercials on recorded cable shows, the more-or-less free commskip works amazingly well.
You could just not use HDMI cable to connect the cable box. Or get a license for the technology and decrypt, scan for commercials, re-encrypt and send to the TV. The device would be used for ad-block, not copying or anything like that.
Well, yes, if you can process the video through a computer, you can do nearly anything. But that’s not a realtime solution or practical for most people who don’t capture to MP4 and dick around editing everything before they watch it. (Says the guy who had a perfect collection of B5 on VHS…)
It’s getting harder and harder to watch video in the modern world other than via HDMI. Too many limitations and outright blocks. Again, yeah, if you have a six-foot video stack you might be able to patch something around, but most folks don’t.
The ad-block device would be a separate device that sits between the cable box and the TV so HDMI could still be used.