THIS thread got me to thinking about another TV invention I’d like to see:
I call this invention the BLEEP BUSTER.
It would work on the same principle as closed captioning does. Television shows would be embedded with a special code. When shows have swearing in them the viewer could choose to turn off that infernal “BLEEP” noise and hear the actual words. I find that BLEEP noise far more offensive than words like fuck or shit.
The BLEEP BUSTER would also have a mode for people who didn’t want to hear profanity but also can’t stand the bleep sound. This mode would simply mute the volume momentarily whenever swear words were used. This code would be embedded at the same time programs had the closed-captioning code embedded, so it really wouldn’t take any more time or money to set programs up for this.
This feature would be installed in the menu options of all new television sets just like the closed captioning feature is.
No, this device would go into new televisions. People with old sets that wanted it could buy an external version that plugged into their set.
This is exactly how it was when closed captioning came out. People who wanted it and had an older set could buy a decoder box. they didn’t go out and buy a new TV.
And, just like closed captioning, you would need to get the TV stations and satellite & cable compnies to invest in the new equipment which could transmit the unbleeped information to the new TVs.
And you’d need to get FCC approval for allowing this. And the FCC listens a lot more to angry religious groups which can send thousands of angry emails than it does to reason about aldults having the freedom to act responsibly on their own behalf.
Bottom line: Technologically trivial. Practically impossible. In 10 years when all this is routinely streamed over the internet to your computer, bleeping may well be obsolete. It’s presence in US braodcast TV will continue untl the last broadcast TV shuts down in 2105 or whenever.
The problem with that is that, for a program aired with a digital “flag” to let your TV know to do the bleeping/muting, the base footage would have to be unbleeped. Thus everyone without the decoder box would hear the shits and fucks. Can you imagine how that’d play out it Peoria ?
That means that the unbleeped information would have to be broadcast in a addition to the bleep. The bleep would have to be the default for older televisions, and the unbleeped swear would have to be broadcast separately. In addition, a signal needs to tell the new fangled device to switch the audio source and splice it into the running audio.
There is nothing coded in the bleeps. The audio is completely overwritten with that tone.
Well, wouldn’t it be fun if pkbites’s invention just randomly put in its own swear word? And you’d need to choose a default voice for it. So instead of Brad Pitt saying: “You killed my wife, you BLEEP! (fucking) villain!” You would hear:
Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. With digital flags, you can add things or toggle between things, not remove things. As **WarmNPrickly **says, the bleeps are added in post-production by overwriting the sound track. The process is irreversible (although of course, TV studios keep a copy of the original footage), just like blurring or adding the channel’s logo on the frame. There’s no data hidden under a bleep, they studio guys cut the sound and paste the bleep.
So, to make your idea possible, one would have to broadcast an unedited footage, with a digital “order” to your TV to mute & bleep if the censorship setting it toggled on. I suppose you could even set the default reaction of a TV set to that flag to be mute & bleep, and only show the normal footage if the settings specifically allow it, but the point remains that a TV without a BLEEP BUSTER wouldn’t know how to interpret that unknown digital flag, and thus would show the normal *fucking *footage.
ETA :
Yup, that’d be possible. But it would also cost more : the post-prod guys would have to release two different tracks, and of course they’re going to ask to be paid in full for both, even if the only difference between the two is bleeping.
Instead of a bleep, encrypt the offensive words in a non-lossy format so that it would sound beep-ish to the listener. Then give new sets a way to decode it. Programs can add it as they like or just stick with the old beep. Sound is transmitted as per normal. Considering all the stuff already going on with digital broadcast, this ought to be a doddle.
As everyone else has pointed out, if the bleep is in the soundtrack, then the original words are gone. The existing devices, available from two different companies (I did a lot of consulting on the development of one of them), take it from the other side. The audio in the broadcast is left unbleeped, and the device is set to remove certain obscenities. This allows individual viewers to choose their own offensive words.
As an example, some people find taking the Lord’s name in vain the worst of obscenities, and would want “God damn” and variants thereof removed, but wouldn’t be bothered at all by milder vulgarities like “crap.” Others wouldn’t care about religious-based obscenities, but might want to remove the scatological ones.
So far, the broadcasters haven’t seen adequate financial upside in implementing such a system, so it’s all done by reading the words in the closed captioning and estimating what portion of the soundtrack to block on the fly.
I actually have a patent on a form of this technology. It can selectively bleep out pieces of the soundtrack and block portions of the picture, depending on individual viewer preferences. Similar to a v-chip, but instead of blocking the whole program, it lets parents remove only the specific stuff they don’t want their kids to see (e.g., one parent might leave in nudity but block violence and another parent might do the opposite).
