Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Patents IBM Media Spam

IBM Files DVD Spam Patent Application 170

An anonymous reader writes "Mark Wilson of Gizmodo.com reports that IBM is applying for a patent for DVDs that contain or download 'on demand' commercials that cannot be skipped. Consumers would be able to purchase these DVDs at a lower price than regular DVDs and pay extra to enjoy their purchase ad-free without having to buy a second DVD. Perhaps this is part of the massive shift in advertising that IBM predicts."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

IBM Files DVD Spam Patent Application

Comments Filter:
  • Spam? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:09AM (#21477043) Homepage Journal
    Consumers would be able to purchase these DVDs at a lower price than regular DVDs and pay extra to enjoy their purchase ad-free without having to buy a second DVD.

    The thing that distinguishes spam from commercial mail is that it's unsolicited. These discs sound like they suck, but they're not spam. (I note the linked article doesn't mention spam either)
    • Re:Spam? (Score:5, Funny)

      by somersault ( 912633 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:11AM (#21477051) Homepage Journal
      Yep, not so much spam as mafia tactics. If you dont pay up, we send round the boys. The advertising boys.
    • Re:Spam? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by El Lobo ( 994537 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:12AM (#21477415)
      OTOH, if they are much cheaper it may be a good deal. Anybody have one of the latest Disney DVDs? To just start the film you need yo click 12 times. And no, pressing menu doesn't help.

      First you need to see the Copyright notice (no skip), then you get 2 disney logos (the one with Ting and the Buena Vista one, no skip).

      Then you have no less than 8 "Comming to DVD" Disney films. Thankfully those can be skipped, but not directly. For some reason, you need to press skipp 8 times. And no, "Menu" doesn't get you directly to the ..ehmm...menu..

      Sometimes i don't care to press skip and rather let my son watch the whole thing.. they win again..

      And worst of all, those Disney VDs are in fact more expensive than those from other studios which have less ads.. Go figure

      So i rather pay less for the same ads (I doub they'll have more than Disney anyway).

      • Re:Spam? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:47AM (#21478183)
        You know you can buy a DVD player which ignores all those annoying navigation restrictions, don't you?
        • Well, I sure as hell didn't know. Where can I buy one?
          • For the price of a video card with S-Video, Component Video or HDMI output (or alternatively, a TV with VGA or DVI input), VLC player by VideoLan.org [videolan.org] puts you in control quite nicely.

            I use Windows XP MediaCenter Edition as the centerpiece of my home AV setup, and in addition making you sit through unskippables, it, "due to restrictions set by the broadcaster," prohibits you from playing a commercial (CSS protected) DVD at higher than 480p resolution. VLC kept me from having to start over with Linux MCE or M
      • Sony disks are also quite infested with unskippables. The irony of Disney DVDs is that they have the least on them -- almost never a commentary track, rarely any kind of "making of" and the movie itself is invariably under 90 minutes, sometimes in the 7x minute range. Even on double disk "Special Editions"!

        Luckily I discovered a faster way to get through unskippables -- lean on the fast forward button. Either the previews run at warp speed or, if the DVD allows it the previews will be skipped entirely
      • dvd-decrypter, select stream, save-as.

        how hard is that, dude?

        you are not doing your child a service by EXPOSING them to advertising that is against your will.

        basically, in the formative years, you are now filling their cranium up with useless ads and jingles.

        I consider that harmful.

        take control over your own media players! stop using 'appliance' dvd players. they're junk anyway and they help fund 'the bad guys' via licensing costs.

        rip to disk, save the 'stream' as simple .mpg files and you and your child
      • Anybody have one of the latest Disney DVDs? To just start the film you need yo click 12 times. And no, pressing menu doesn't help.

        Yes, I do. But I also have a chinese DVD player from Shinco [shinco.com] company. It allows to skip all crap, no matter what DVD thinks about it.

      • by sowth ( 748135 )

        Do you really think they are going to charge you less for the advert infested DVDs? No, they will just tack it on all their new DVDs, so if you want it, you have to watch all the adverts. They are probably reasearching a way to force you to sit down and watch the adverts, so you can't just do something else while you are waiting for the movie to start.

        It is better to just avoid these companies as much as you can. They will do everything they can think of to squeeze money out of you and screw you for as mu

    • Shortly after the system goes online, it will start downloading adverts for more advert-infested DVDs. Disks will start multiplying exponentially, the world will plunge behind an event horizon, and the universe will be sucked into a supermassive black-hole of infinite advertising.

      Much the same kind of thing happened when they started printing adverts for breakfast cereal on packets of breakfast cereal.

      • by mikael ( 484 )
        The weirdest DVD I ever saw was just yesterday when I was in the supermarket. They had these credit card shaped DVD's (must have been maybe just a few minutes of video) which were being used to sell seats at a soccer match.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • > I wouldn't buy it Why not? It looks like an improvement to me. Pretty much all DVDs have all the ads anyway, this looks like it could be a way to lose them. Although I suppose it depends where they put their ads (polite suggestions only, please).
      • I'd buy it. I would probably only use it once though.
        Thats all you need to do to rip the movie (minus ads) and put it on a nice video on demand server. :)
  • by mrjb ( 547783 )
    <sarcasm>Wow, I can't wait to get a defective-by-design DVD player that supports this.</sarcasm>
    • by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:50AM (#21477693)
      This is exactly the wrong direction for content distributors, I bet the pirated version won't have unskippable ads.
      • by Thaelon ( 250687 )
        Of course it won't. Just this weekend I was watching some DVDs that my roommate bought. And watching DVDs was an inferior experience to that of watching DVD rips on the same hardware (XBMC'd XBox). There are no unskippable advertisements or warnings, and they're cheaper that way!

        So, not only are illegal copies a better product, they're generally cheaper. Way to go content middle men. You fail again.
      • On the other hand, if the price is significantly lower, they may be within range of competing with pirated/illegal copies. *shrug*
  • oh wow... this will surely be a hit. Where do I sign up? :s ...this just shows how greedy these media people are. So you still PAY... it's NOT FREE... PAY.. AND get to see ads?... wtf! Eventhough it has a lower price... no no no... no thank you no!

    In game ads and now movie ads... this is getting ugly.
    • by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:23AM (#21477149) Homepage
      Been to a movie theater lately?
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by siyavash ( 677724 )
        um... you mean the place where my mom and dad used to go when they were young?... no? There are BIG TVs you know. Why would I want to hear people talk, chew, spit and play with their bags?

        I'm a movie fan... I enjoy them without "people".
        • And the world goes on bowling alone ...

          The social aspect of humanity dies with this comment.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
            Last I checked, I could still invite all my friends over to my house to watch a movie, without putting up with sold out movies, long lineups, bad seating, hundreds of other people who have no regard for people watching the movie, sitting through commercials, and starting the movie on someone elses schedule.
      • No, I haven't. And though the commercials weren't the ONLY reason I quit, they were the final nail in the coffin.
      • by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        Been to a movie theater lately?

        The last movie-theater chain around here that didn't run ads (other than the usual trailers and "visit our snackbar" messages) appears to have been bought out by another chain that does. I've not been back to the theater since, and probably won't be for the foreseeable future. Netflix gets most movies a few months after they're in theaters, and MythTV's DVD player doesn't enforce PUO [wikipedia.org]s. (My old Apex AD610A doesn't, either, but it's still packed up as I don't really need i

    • by dave420 ( 699308 )
      If it means the difference between being able to pay for a DVD and not, how is this bad? Do you get to skip the adverts at the cinema? As for advertising in games, if it reduces the cost of the game *and* makes the game more realistic (as there is quite a bit of advertising in real life, in case you haven't noticed), what's wrong with that?
    • I don't know. Seems that a lot of DVDs have unskippable ads already. It would be nice if they changed once in a while, instead of watching some commercial for a 5 year old car, or a commercial for a Disney movie I won't be able to buy for 6 more years because they put it in the "vault". Plus if they are significantly cheaper than the DVDs that are currently out there, then I could see this working. If they somehow said, 5 minutes of commercial maximum, and then you get to watch your movie, and it only co
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 )
      At least in the UK, the business model for television is moving to subscription eor advertisements. If you subscribe to Sky Television and get only the basic box, then you have to pay a subscription and you get advertisements interrupting everything except BBC.

      If you subscribe to Sky Plus (or Sky HD -- the HD box includes Sky Plus functionality), you get a "recording" box. This allows you to pause and rewind (as far as the last channel change) live TV. If you change channels on time for the beginnin
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sure DVD Shrink can fix this problem.
  • by aix tom ( 902140 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:16AM (#21477093)
    ... is based on shoving it down the consumers throat will ultimately fail.

    If I see an add which annoys me, I will try pretty hard to avoid that company in the future.

    So companies should not try to figure out "How do we FORCE people to see our adds", but "What can we do that people WANT to see our adds".

    THAT is the big shift in marketing that could save the advertising business.

    Also, since this idea is based on the DVD player having an connection to the internet, it would be pretty simple to set up the local network in a way that redirects all download attempts to a local server which just gives out 0-second spots or something.
    • Also, since this idea is based on the DVD player having an connection to the internet, it would be pretty simple to set up the local network in a way that redirects all download attempts to a local server which just gives out 0-second spots or something.

      I think what they are going to try to do is make it so the commercials are quite bearable. That way while yes, you technically could do things to avoid it, it isn't worth the 3 minutes of your time to do it, and you'd probably rather just watch the comme
      • I think what they are going to try to do is make it so the commercials are quite bearable.

        The trouble is: that's a content issue, and not a technical one. IBM can dictate the former, but it'll be the ad agencies who ultimately decide the latter. Even if the first ones are gentle and unobtrusive, it'll only be a matter of time before someone decides the medium is ripe for aggressive exploitation, and wham!

        It's like the claptrap about selling at a cheaper price. It won't happen. Either the ads are acc

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Asic Eng ( 193332 )
      Why are you sure it would fail? People already put up with non-skipable sections of their DVDs, why wouldn't they swallow this, too? You may try to avoid the company which shows the ad, but you don't matter - you are a part of a tiny group who cares about this issue.

      [...] it would be pretty simple to set up the local network in a way that redirects all download attempts to a local server which just gives out 0-second spots or something.

      Which is easy to prevent by further limitations of your rights - if y

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NickFortune ( 613926 )

        Why are you sure it would fail? People already put up with non-skipable sections of their DVDs, why wouldn't they swallow this, too?

        Because people are starting to realise that they don't have to put up with all those ads? DVRs, adblock software, pirate content... I think people are starting to get a sense of how much they're being advertised at - and I think there's growing resentment at the amount of time ads waste, and at the overly intrusive and manipulative nature of their content.

        you are a part o

        • let's use the correct terminology here

          The correct terminology is never used there - I tried to summarize how the arguments might go.

          You want a low to stop me having admin rights on my own computer [...]

          No I don't. I don't want a DMCA either, or a restriction on fair use rights.

          DVD costs as much as the market will bear

          People will buy what costs the least, and they will not give much thought to the freedom they lose. You are right, there is no reason not to hike up the price after people have got

          • The correct terminology is never used there - I tried to summarize how the arguments might go.

            Fair enough

            No I don't. I don't want a DMCA either, or a restriction on fair use rights.

            I wasn't keen on the idea of a broadcast flag, either. Or on this notion of Darl McBride's that with the right lawsuit he might seize the copyrights for Linux. The bad guys don't always win.

      • by Inda ( 580031 )
        "People already put up with non-skipable sections of their DVDs" - Asic Eng

        Why do people always repeat this? I've owned three DVD players since they came out. All of them did as they were told and skipped the evil bits.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
      Exactly. I wouldn't mind watching ads on TV if every other ad wasn't another stupid tampon commercial, or wasn't completely terrible. If they actually put thought into advertisements, made them interesting to watch, and actually informed you about the product, instead of just trying to con you into buying their products, there would be a lot less people trying to not watch the commercials.
    • So companies should not try to figure out "How do we FORCE people to see our adds", but "What can we do that people WANT to see our adds".

      Maybe they could offer a discount on your home video purchases if you agree to sit through a short advertisement before the movie is played, or something like that...
    • oh yeah, see how billboards failed... oh wait...

      and Big (ford, GM, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, VW, etc etc etc) Logos on cars failed, (don't think they're not there for advertising)

      Logos logos everywhere and we're forced to look at them every day. I'm guessing everyone on here has at least 3-5 different logos within their view right now!

      Just looking around I see, Nortel, Dell, Microsoft, HP, Compaq, Logitech, Intel, Belkin. All being shoved down my throat, yet at this point it's acceptable, and expected
  • I agree.

    Something like this falls well in that category of advertising, although there was really no need to mention fecal matter in the summary...
    .
    .
    What F? Aaah... massive SHIFT... My bad.

    Still... That would be a shitty deal.
    Ah well... there is always pirated version with no adverts.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    1 - find out what address these ads are served from.
    2 - set up a server of your own, serving 0.5 seconds of not-advertising insterad of all the crappy ads the manufacturer intended.
    3 - Use hosts file or simlar cleverness to redirect DVDs to the fake server.
    4 - ????
    5 - PROFIT!!!
  • by Idaho ( 12907 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:23AM (#21477141)
    If they enforce the patent, there will likely be less DVD's that actually use this technology (assuming most content distributors won't want to pay for a license on the patented technology).

    Then again, who cares anyway. TV is already dead, now if DVD's also get killed by gratuitous advertising left, right and center, it will only drive people towards other alternatives (such as iTunes or using bittorrent) even faster.

    In fact, this has been happening for a while, what with many DVD-players forcing you to watch the MAFIAA warnings they put in front of each and every movie these days.
    • Then again, who cares anyway. TV is already dead,

      Have you tried checking your fuse box?
    • TV is already dead,

      90% of it is. true.

      as I posted just a few minutes ago, HDTV changed pbs for me. before, in 'sd' pbs wasn't as interesting. the content was ok but the presentation (standard def) got tiring, at least on any modern lcd/plasma set.

      then I tried an HDTV receiver and pbs seemed 'new' to me again. saturday nite they have their usual live music shows (soundstage and austin city limits). that, alone, pretty much justified my HTPC build. those shows are almost entirely spam-free once you clip
  • Step one (Score:4, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:31AM (#21477185)
    I'm sure they feel if they can get people used to having ads then they can drop the lower price point then just make it standard on all DVDs. They'd probably phase it in but I have to believe that's the real intent is to make the technology available industry wide and slowly get rid of the option and simply make it another revenue stream. I won't watch FX Channel because of the in program ads on the screen. If they go this route with DVDs, force feeding commercials, I'll stop buying and renting, period. I barely rent as it is because there are so few films worth seeing. This is just another way to bleed a few extra cents out of each DVD. I just hope people aren't stupid enough to accept it but given the lack viewer reaction to the current onslaught of commercials I have to believe the future is even more pervasive commercials and me reading more books.
    • There's two parts to this... first this will help the disc distribution at Walmart remain cheaper than iTunes keeping the model of buying discs in place and may even curb the rental market because who'll buy the key for a rental?

      also the purchase of the key would be online directly to the studio... from your DVD menu.. and by DVD the probably mean HD or Blu-ray as those both have internet access required in all hardware but not for all discs... yet. But anyway, this would be like Xbox live, getting you to
  • Discounted?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:32AM (#21477189)
    Setting aside the fact that what this will really wind up with is not a discounted ad-supported DVD, but a $30 ad-supported DVD and an *INCREASED* $35 or $40 commercial-free DVD -- why would I want to pay for something that has ANY ads?

    If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE? Making me PAY for it to come with advertising is a good way to convince me to go get it sans-advertising entirely free online.
    • by dave420 ( 699308 )
      That's quite a leap of faith there, considering there is no information that says that's the case. If the advertising only raises a portion of the cost required to produce the DVD, why on earth should they give it away? If a DVD costs $30, the advertising generates $15, you should pay $15 for it, not $0. You buy magazines and newspapers, and they have advertising...
      • we already have this issue with Xbox live companies selling "half" a game for $60 but to get all the cool advertised extra weapons, race car tracks, game levels, etc, you have to pay the company something "extra" even though that content is already on the disc you purchased! This is just a way to do the same thing for DVDs.

        In this case the cost will probably go down as the studios would rather you purchase for $10 versus rent for $5. They'll put ads in to try to get the $5 directly from you and cut out th
    • "If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE?"

      Because the cable companies have already proved that the ideots will pay for cable AND watch ads. Remember what cable was new? The idea was that if you paid for the content you got it ad free. Then they found out people did not care about ads. People are adicted to TV and will do ANYTHING to get it, watch ads, pay $100 a month anything...
  • Every time I read about DRM being dropped (ha!) I am hopeful that Big Media finally understands that you shouldn't go out of your way to piss of your customers.. Then we get more news blurbs like this.. /shakes head
  • by IainMH ( 176964 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:33AM (#21477197)
    I thought about this on the weekend. When you buy any Sunday paper, you get masses of leaflets and spam etc. I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.

    The problem is, the ad people probably wouldn't be too happy about only advertising to people who are by definition parsimonious.
    • I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.

      Newspapers make more of their money off advertising than off of the people who purchase it, so the 5% increse you suggest wouldn't come close to covering what they'd be losing. Would you be willing to pay 200% more for an advertisement free Sunday paper? I suspect most people wouldn't.

    • by zoward ( 188110 )
      When you buy any Sunday paper, you get masses of leaflets and spam etc. I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.



      Yes, but unlike the DVD, you can skip the ads in the newspaper (or feed them to your wood burning stove and let them heat your house). Ironically, the only time I buy the paper these days is if I want the ads (eg, Black Friday).

    • I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.
      Seems like you'd be able to do something like that with this system. From the summary: "Consumers would be able to purchase these DVDs at a lower price than regular DVDs and pay extra to enjoy their purchase ad-free without having to buy a second DVD."
  • by drfireman ( 101623 ) <dan@kimbe[ ]com ['rg.' in gap]> on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:33AM (#21477201) Homepage
    Current DVDs, at least those for popular new releases, tend to have 5+ uninterruptible previews/ads up front. I guess these new ones will be more intrusive, but cheaper. There are things to like about that, I guess. As long as they're starting down the road for tiered pricing, it would be nice if they could offer ad-free DVDs as well, a product that's not available for most titles now. For that matter, it would be nice if they offered extremely cheap DVDs with ads interrupting the movie every scene or so.
    • of the feature presentation.

      In fact, they seem to make a big thing out of that "feature"....

      Granted I only have about a dozen HD DVDs but I haven't found one to break that feature yet, but I bet some company will. I wonder if Blu-Ray has a similar requirement
    • that's why I won't even attempt to watch a non-ripped dvd anymore.

      1) rip dvd to disk
      1a) did it work? no errors? great, watch it, now.
      1b) threw an error? try another opto drive (another brand or model). still errors? return it.

      pretty simple algorithm.

      similar for my HD tv viewing. I mostly watch PBS HDtv and they have commercials only at the beginning and end. save HDTV to disk (hdhomerun box), run video-redo to select the *middle* part of the show (about 5mins in and about 25mins out). run ad-detecti
  • by iainl ( 136759 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:35AM (#21477221)
    If I remember Patent 101 correctly, your patent is specifically limited to the claims you make.

    So this one only covers Digital Versatile Discs. Not HD-DVD, not BluRay, not any theoretical third HD media format.

    Hands up, everyone who wants to go out and buy a whole new DVD player, because you don't already have one in the house? Really?
  • Sure, do it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:36AM (#21477229)
    Get the disc at a discount, run AnyDVD, sounds good to me!
  • by Emperor Tiberius ( 673354 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:37AM (#21477233) Homepage
    I wonder how long it will be before home entertainment products come with weaponry to coerce you into viewing advertisements...
    • by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:46AM (#21477293)
      2008. The movie will only play if there's at least a person connected to the player. If you skip the advertising, the connected person is tasered.

      2010. The player has motion and thermal sensors. Any heat-producing or moving entity in the proximities will receive a hit of "pain microwave ray" unless they see the full advertising.

      2015. Your salary goes directly to the MPAA so they can decide what you are going to buy every month. Nobody remembers what a movie is.
    • by Indy1 ( 99447 )
      Thats ok, I'll shoot back :) And I promise that I'm a far better shot then any Hollywood lawyer :)
  • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:46AM (#21477291) Journal

    Think about it, little kid asks for something, parent says no. Kid logic kicks in and the kid starts whining about it, bad parenting responds and gives in, proving to the kid that whining works.

    Advertisers ask us to buy X with ads, we say NO. Advertisiers logic kicks in and starts forcing us to watch the AD, do we give in? Doesn't really matter, if we don't, they just push harder and if we give in, then IT WORKS, so they push harder to sell even more!

    F1 racing used to be broadcast by every country in europe, this was great because in olden days it meant you could choose your preffered commentator (if you live in holland you get English, Dutch, Belgian and German state TV on cable) ALL without commericial breaks. Then came some commercial channels that outbid the state tv offerings, so people stopped watching the feed from that country and just watched F1 in a foreign language. When the Dutch F1 broadcast went commericial I switch to the BBC and when that went commericial I switched to Belgian tv.

    When that too went commerercial, I stopped watching F1. The commercial breaks were just too many to put up with.

    So what has the F1 organisation achieved? They lost a viewer who at least saw all the regular ads on the racetrack because they wanted more money. So they wanted more and got nothing.

    I may be alone, but viewing figures for F1 are down. They blaim it on the races themselves but might it just be that people are sick to death of the show being interrupted constantly for ads?

    A similar story can be seen around Dutch soccer. That was broadcast by tradition by the NOS, the state part of state telivision. (I am not a soccer fan so excuse me if I get some details wrong) Years ago a commercial channel was launched (sport 7?) which would be pay-per-view like setup. People didn't subscribe. At all. It was a HUGE FLOP. They had totally miscalculated dutch willingness to pay for soccer matches. They thought they would be rich, they ended up bankrupt.

    So the license went back the next year to the NOS. Recently another new station launched, this time "free" to watch, Talpa, and it too made a really big deal out of getting SOME of the rights to some of the soccer matches. Again they thought they would make it big, but people just didn't watch. The way the matches were broadcast was a constant source of irritation among soccer fans and the ads were way to heavy.

    End result? Talpa went bust and soccer matches are now more or less back in the old format.

    The odd thing? Holland is soccer nuts, so what could go wrong with pushing lots of ads around soccer matches? It works in the US right?

    Well, in theory it might be simply a case of too much too soon, you have to remember that it is not that long ago that the only ads were BEFORE and AFTER a match NOT during NOT even during half-time. Even more shocking, on sunday there were NO ADS AT ALL.

    This has changed but still, ads during the match itself may have been too much.

    A clear case of being too demanding, kids KNOW this, they know when to push it and when they are about to be sent to their room. Advertisers just don't seem to be able to spot the warning signs. They keep pushing and pushing when we already kicked them out of the house to freeze to death.

    The reason is offcourse simple, advertisers do NOT care about selling a product with their ads, they are selling ADS!

    Every obnoxious ad campaign that drives you nuts HAS ALREADY BEEN A SUCCESS because the ad SOLD!

    So us claiming that the ads for MS software on slashdot are a stupid idea are missing the real picture. The ad company that sold those ads, made a sale and that is all that matters. That is why you should never believe any research on ad effectiveness by an ad company unless you believe research on soap by soap companies.

    • By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself.

      No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself.

      Seriously though, if you are, do.

      Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going t
    • by LuSiDe ( 755770 )
      You make some very good points but most people here won't know the details about European programming (I can verify your claims as far as my knowledge goes on these subjects).

      However I'm afraid you misunderstand what the general publics opinion of ads is: a necessary evil. A minority, if not small minority of people, are not (or almost not) influenced by ads and are able to close themselves from ads (consciously, because subconsciously its much harder). Those people tend to prefer not to watch ads, and some
    • The odd thing? Holland is soccer nuts, so what could go wrong with pushing lots of ads around soccer matches? It works in the US right?

      Televised soccer just doesn't happen in the US, unless you're talking about niche channels that cater to immigrant/expatriot populations within the US, or the World Cup, which has lately actually been getting some play here. The closest major league soccer team to me went to the finals and not a person that wasn't a soccer obsessive even knew about it, except for a brief me

  • my predictions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:04AM (#21477381) Homepage Journal
    I expect ad-infested DVDs will cost the same as now, and we will pay more than now for ad-free. That or I do not know anything about this world.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dachannien ( 617929 )
      I'll counter your prediction with a gem of my own:

      There won't be any ad-free DVDs. At least, not legal ones.

      • Right you are if current marketing trends continue.

        Except in my house it will be: There won't be any ad-based DVDs (which I will henceforth call Ad-VD).

        If the offerings are only Ad-VD's, then I will do without.
  • by troll -1 ( 956834 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:13AM (#21477423)
    Before computers were networked we used to copy files onto floppy disks and walk them down the hall to the next office. As a form of content distribution, this is about where DVDs are at today.

    From an engineering point of view, putting stuff on plastic disks and physically moving them to their destination is a pretty dumb way to distribute content in the face of an Internet.

    In the absence of a successfully viable Internet distribution method that ensures some form of copy restriction, the likely reason for movies on DVD is to safeguard distribution rights. But things may change if the current method of funding Internet content through advertising is to expand to include television and movies, much like it does for broadcast TV and radio. So while IBM may hope to gain a market share in DVD advertising, the whole medium may be obsolete in a few years. Just a thought.
    • but 9 gig of bandwith x the number of DVDs sold is a huge amount. most people in the US do not have that available and the cost is prohibitively high compared to a DVD. I have 3 meg service, until I can download full scale DVD or better from iTunes in less than 15 minutes it takes to drive to the rental store, pick out a movie and be home, on line movies are not practical. Good for hard to get stuff like Stargate Atlantis on channels I don't get on cable, but not for casual Friday nite movie browsing.
  • by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:14AM (#21477431)
    or is going to try and create the change?
  • by lophophore ( 4087 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:24AM (#21477499) Homepage
    If DVDs are shipped with must-see commercials, then more and more consumers will feel willing (and perhaps justified) to "illegally" extract the desired content from their **purchased** DVD and burn a new, content-only DVD. This is a stupid plan.

  • Disney disks have been doing this for years, sticking tonnes of unskippable commercials on the disk. Usually 10-15 minutes of them.

    Only they charge you a premium for the disks when compared to other studios.
    • by ahecht ( 567934 )
      Actually, Disney hasn't been doing this for years. Only the first generation of DisneyDVDs had unskippable ads.
      • I've about 15 disks, the only one without is the Jungle Book.

        PAL mind, maybe they change it in the US only.
  • The Disney movie Ratatouille is already sold with a commercial you can't skip, and the Mac movie player obeys that directive.

    With this kind of crap, I'd rather steal the things I want to keep, and rent the things I'm too lazy to bother. What is the point of owning a disc when it is polluted with commercials?

    The appeal to the lowest common denominator is destroying everything, because they're too stupid to know any better. That's where the money is. Being sophisticated and affluent counts for nothing these d
  • DVD? Is that something like a torrent file, only on a disc?

    Seriously, this patent has both workable and novel parts. Unfortunately the novel parts aren't workable the workable parts aren't novel. Most DVDs already have unskippable commercials on them - usually selling the idea of DRM in the form of piracy warnings. As for downloadable commercials, will it be a requirement to have an internet connection to play a DVD? Throw away your DVD players now - especially the portables!

    But, back to my title question
  • This is new? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by egburr ( 141740 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:29AM (#21478023) Homepage
    Most DVDs I get already have unskippable advertising. I suppose the new part is to allow you to skip if you have somehow connected your DVD player to the internet? I haven't seen one yet with a network card or even a modem. Anyway, my solution has been to use my computer to rip the DVD, strip out all the locks and usually the ads too, and burn it to a new disc. This has many benefits:
    • it doesn't matter if the kids scratch the disc, I can replace it easily
    • I can go straight to the movie after putting the disc in the player
    • I don't have to watch the FBI warning (I have one disc that has 3.5 minutes of warnings from various conutries that was unskippable! They really expect me to sit through that?)
    With VHS, I could just fast forward through the ads. With DVD, if you are going to make the ads unskippable and thus make me take the effort to correct that, I'm going to just remove the ads altogether from my copy. You lose ground by being too greedy.
  • Hang on, don't DVDs (at least ones in the UK) have unskippable bits already?

    I know some of my DVDs (the CSI boxed sets for one) have some crap from the film copyright people about "you wouldn't steal an old lady's handbag and knock her to the floor, you wouldn't steal thousands of pounds worth of car before causing large amounts of terror and damage, you wouldn't kill a school full of children in a murderous rampage, so don't copy a load of bits from a disk valued at about £10-£20".

    There's also
  • Yes, because if there's anything I hear the typical consumer demanding, it's that we should have more mandatory advertising.

    What's that, you say? It's the advertisers who are demanding it? It just proves, once again, who the actual customer is for any and all media produced: advertisers. Viewers are just the product being delivered to them.
  • I've long been annoyed with having to skip over commercials in what I "tape" on my (Pioneer) HD recorder. My next recorder is surely going to be a real computer rather than a traditional commercial product.

    I wonder: do MythTV-based players also enforce the "do not skip" segments, or does it have a more consumer-friendly approach?

    If it does, I wonder if it would be a legal risk zone to do this to "patent-encumbered ad blocks" (if it can be called that).
  • All this talk about ripping to get around the annoying FBI, MPAA "Don't steal this", and ad segments has me thinking.. if I had a media center PC in my living room, is there a software DVD player that would enable me to play from the original DVD, but skip those bits? I mean, why go through the bother of ripping and wasting blanks? I've never had a reason to assemble a media center PC, but if it could do this.. it'd be worth it to me.
  • I hate buying HBO TV boxsets because the first disc always has a group of HBO commercials and all the functionality to skip it is disabled. So every time I put that disc in I have to sit through 5 minutes of HBO commercials for their other boxsets. Are there DVD players out there that can override this?
  • The big problem with ads on dvds that you purchase, is that the ads themselves become completely out of date soon after your purchase. A person's dvd collection may have hours of trailers for movies that everyone has otherwise forgotten!

    At least TV ads change.
  • that ibm will demonstrate social responsibility again and make license fees so high for this that no one bothers to license it and we dont lose the ability to skip over a commercial in a dvd.

    i dont buy dvds in general (save for absolute favorites office space, three amigos, band of brothers and the matrix 10 dvd set.. ) , but if i did and was forced to watch a commercial everytime i played the thing I'd be rather annoyed.

    Next thing you know theyll start interjecting dvds with commercial interruptions that y
  • I mean, I could actually get something cheaper than the $27 Durabrand that I bought at WalMart (regular price) that supports digital out, so I get Dolby Digital and DTS, progressive scan, is hackable and will output PAL on my discs that I bought in Europe instead of trying to convert to NTSC like most players do (surprisingly my TV supports both 576i and 576P at 50 Hertz on an American HDTV). We just all know that $27 for a DVD player is outragious, and we must have some type of commercial support to make t
    • LOL, and this is what I get for responding to quickly, I sped read this. Its talking about cheaper DVDs, not cheaper DVD players, which is a whole other issue. We all know that paying between $7.50 - $15 a disc is absolutely unreasonable!
  • I'll rip it, I'll strip it, and I'll be paying less for the DVD...

  • I've brought this up before... but it bears repeating.

    Purchasing the DVD itself, offsets the cost of advertising.

    This means, if I put down money in exchange for the product, I expect that I won't be forced to sit through the ads. We have pay-cable that is supposed to be ad-free. Is it? Not anymore. Paying the additional fee for Showtime, HBO, Cinemax and so on was supposed to be an enhanced, ad-free experience. Now all of those channels are full of garbage advertisements, cutting into the show's playing

  • Download ads how? My DVD player isn't connected to a network.

    If it was, yanking the ethernet plug while starting up the player would seem to defeat the download.

  • This is silly

    • There are already ultra-cheap DVDs without ads. Target's $1 bin usually has stacks of them.
    • If someone has the bandwidth to support displaying on-demand ads, wouldn't the money on the ad-ridden DVD be better spent for an on-demand movie? Most of them are in the $3-$5 range.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

Working...