[plug] Re: [OT] Television

[James Devenish]

In message <401DBFDE.9010604 at iinet.net.au>
on Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 11:11:26AM +0800, Lawrie Abbott wrote:
> What bugs me most about TV is the adverts. Its easy to avoid  shows 
> that you are not interested in but its very hard to dodge those 
> adverts.

I remember some of the early days of Foxtel, when advertising was slim,
there was a nice Canon ad: Canon logo, 15--30 seconds, no sound, no
products. These days, there's a great deal of "internal" advertising
(i.e. promotion of Foxtel's own programming lineup). While that's fine,
there is obviously little value in gross repetition of the latest
promotions (if you've seen an ad twice, that's either adequate or more
than adequate). It would be nicer if they'd just show the EPG (programme
guide) or Weather channel instead of specific ads. (They should keep the
breaks, though!) Short but shameful confession: I really like some of
the tunes that they use for their programming ads -- this is why I would
be happy to have the EPG ;-)

> I was trying to think up a way to automatically  mute the volume on
> adverts the other day and had a bit of an idea of an internet based
> system, with an IR control and some sort of P2P voting system...
> anyone have any good ideas/thoughts?

I wonder if people do things like this with TiVo (in the USA).