Dish Network Announces Prime Time TV With No Ads 283
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that Dish Network has announced a new feature called called Auto Hop for its satellite TV subscribers that will let you automatically skip all commercials for prime time television from the four major broadcast networks — when you watch programs the day after they are first aired. 'Viewers love to skip commercials,' says Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. 'With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before.' Craig Moffett says it's going to be hard for Dish to maintain good relationships with its programming affiliates when they start offering a feature intended to cut out the bulk of the affiliates' revenues. Whether the auto-skip feature can withstand legal challenge remains to be seen. 'Given the already long list of industry-unfriendly features promoted by Dish, one wonders if Auto Hop will be the final straw that provokes legal action from the broadcast networks,' says Moffett. 'We suspect Auto Hop probably uses some sort of bookmarking insertion based on automated recognition of commercial inserts (called "fingerprinting'"), which if true could certainly be argued to be a manipulation of the content stream by the distributor.'"
Re:ReplayTV (Score:2, Informative)
Oh. You didn't realise that they reconsidered and continued the service after we all bitched at their plans to discontinue? By the time they did that I'd switched to running against SchedulesDirect provided schedule served up by WiRNS (same data that replaytv serve up), and since that works so well I haven't bothered to switch back. If you've still got your boxes, I suggest reconnecting them. :)
I couldn't live without my 2 replaytvs. I use them to record everything - standard or high def in medium quality. Setting the HD output of the cable box to anamorphic allows you to exceed SD - I'd estimate I get to about DVD quality. I willingly sacrifice 5.1 surround and that extra bit of visual definition for the awesomeness that replaytv otherwise provides. Automatic commercial skip is the dogs bollocks.
IIRC, I think it was DishTV that bought out the IP once ReplayTV was sued into oblivion.
Re:I work in the advertising industry (Score:5, Informative)
The TV shows on The Pirate Bay will have all the obnoxious shit cut out, once again giving pirates a better product than paying (ad-watching) customers.
This is the Internet age. You only need one bored nerd to manually cut ads, crop video, edit the soundtrack and start a torrent.
Re:Replacement advertising. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I work in the advertising industry (Score:1, Informative)
The pirates are supplying a market for goods. Those goods may be declared illegal by the political masters, but it does not stop them from being goods.
Re:I work in the advertising industry (Score:2, Informative)
The alternative explanation is that he's getting his needs met on a regular basis by an attractive woman. How's your sex life these days?
Probably as good as his spelling! Marridge???? Seriously???
Re:I work in the advertising industry (Score:4, Informative)
Even if that were the case, they'd just put advertising directly in the show (more than they already do). It would feel worse than watching an infomercial.
The system in the UK also includes a ban on Product placement and other advertising in-show. I think they've eased up a bit now, but when I was a kid the cartoon "Top Cat" was retitled to "Boss Cat" because there was a local brand of cat food called "Top Cat". (Yes, they actually edited the title sequence, badly). The gang still called him TC though, which would have been confusing if I had actually thought about it.