Advertising detection and inserting

[bachman]

Ok here's a question.........is it possible to receive a television program in realtime and automatically detect when a commercial break appears........then run a script to play your own commercial in its place???

Does anyone know any software or hardware that can do this?

Cheers

Bachman

[Garrett]

Oh Yeah, this is actually pretty damn easy.

Bye using the detect Media change switch in the Snapstream config. It allows external applications to automagically detect when commercials are played. Activate the switch in the config, and then in the text box provided, put the path to the script to do the overlay'd video.

The trouble there is that you have to write the script in the goofy scripting language. I keep having troubles with the scripts, as sometimes they detect media changes when someone is watching tv on the tv program itself!

I think there is a way to use the getCommercialVendor() method call to determine if it's a real commercial, but I'd need to build a long list of acutal commercial vendors. (very long!)

The trouble with that, is sometimes they put those "popover" type commercials in where they advertise another tv in the bottom-right 1/4 of the screen. The getCommercialVendor() sometimes returns a valid vendor for those, and you certainly don't want to try and overlay those! you'll miss part of the show.

The last trouble I have is with product placements. I really hate it when people are drinking Mountain Dew on the screen (or even Barq's) )... I keep trying to place my own beverages into the stream, but it keeps throwing DontBeSoStupidExceptions.

G

[Julia]

are you just trolling?

Julia

[Garrett]

Trolling? Me, or him?



G

[bachman]

We want to buy an off the shelf system that can do this.....just need to find someone to take our money

trolling?

[festivalman]

haha sounds like gator.com where they would install software on people's machines to overlap gator's ads with the original ones on websites. This was just deemed illegal and they were forced to cut it out. so, poo poo to you. Garrett, you're a programmer geek.. admit it...


"I like your attitude: fiesty, yet spineless" - Monty Burns

[bachman]

Its not illegal in this Country (yet). A very interesting subject for legal debate though

[bachman]

remember im mainly talking here about broadcast TV not internet

[Garrett]

Yeah,

I code. ;p

G

[festivalman]

well, it may not be illegal yet, but it will be soon... those companies paid lots of money to advertise in those shows... it's bad enough that we can skip commercials without too much effort these days.. but replacing them is just plain evil... almost as evil as that 'laser' idea....


The order was issued in a lawsuit filed against Gator in June by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Dow Jones and seven other publishers, which allege the company's ads violate their copyrights and steal revenue.

[bachman]

its a problem for the networks alright Festival.......we produce some of those commercials and would suffer also, but it's going to happen either way, smart computer driven home entertainment devices are here to stay and can only get smarter. So advertisers will figure other ways to push their snake oil on us such as product placement and in show advertising. Less and Less people are watching TV in real time anyway. Times are a changing in TV land.

[jwcrim]

I'm not yet familiar with SS. I would like to use it as a First-In First-Out buffer.

I would like to be able to view a program (delayed 15 to 30 miniutes) while I am recording it and manually jump forward or backward a prescribed number of seconds by pressing the corresponding hotkey. Is this practical using SnapStream? If not are there other alternatives?

[festivalman]

well, tivo does that perfectly, as do other standalone boxes like replaytv or ultimate tv if you have satellite. snapstream isn't there yet with the live video, and it looks like it'll be a large number of months before they can solidly sell you a product that can. showshifter at showshifter.com, and/or powervcr at cyberlink's site can directly do what you're talking about.


http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/p....jsp?ProdId=20

[jwcrim]

Thanks for the info.

PowerVCR II seems like it would work well. Showshifter's site describes freeze operation but is not so clear on whether you can easily jump segments while continuing to record.

Do you know if the standalone boxes can be operated (to manually jump segments only) w/o the service subscription?

[festivalman]

replaytv specifically has 30 second commercial skipping built in.. you just keep hittng the button until you get there, and replaytv works entirely without a subscription. tivo has a secret key sequence you can do on the remote that will change the 15 minute skip, to 30 seconds... i'd highly recommend tivo, but if you're set on not doing a subscription, then replaytv is the one for you..

http://www.replaytv.com/video/replay...0_features.asp