Ugh. Royal Philips Electronics has devised an invention that would prevent TV viewers from switching the channel during commercials or fast-forwarding past commercials when watching DVR content. Viewers would have the option to get out of the freeze by paying a fee. Broadcasters would have the option to implement this technology on a per-program basis, and the ability would have to be included inside the viewer’s set-top box.
I hope this never sees the light of day. My DVR has to be one of my most prized gadgets. I can rewind jokes and scenes, watch programming when I want, save time and reduce my annoyance factor by not having to watch the same commercials over and over, save shows forever. It even saves me time that I can use to blog! I can understand that broadcasters need to finance their operations and one of the main ways is via advertising, but there is only so much you can force down people’s throats. If this comes to pass, I imagine there’s going to be a huge backlash and it’s not going to be anywhere as successful as they may have hoped for it to be. Incidentally, I’m not totally blaming Philips – they were probably just responding to demands from the broadcasting industry.