From: pjm@ionia.engr.sgi.com (Patrick May)
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 95 17:50:20 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Sex & Crime TV filter
In-Reply-To: <199508010000.RAA28911@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199508010050.RAA19664@ionia.engr.sgi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Bill Stewart writes:
 > Blocking commercials would be fun, but would probably be illegal :-),
 > or at least stations that supported it would have trouble getting
 > advertisers.

     Actually, there was a story in the San Jose Mercury News a couple
of weeks ago regarding a product that does just that.  VCRs from at
least two manufacturers will contain a chip and/or firmware that
detects commercials and does not record them.

     My dim memories from a project I did for Sony a couple of years
ago are that commercials are separated by a fixed number of black
frames and some, at least, have tracking information encoded so that
advertisers can monitor how often they are played.  I'll try to dig up
more info.

Regards,

Patrick May

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBMB16QO5Yg08fDKehAQHcgAP/c9OCy/jIKXdjDPjfifPHfK9tqRO8EWNY
cAoPH418Otur0jaORTEoyuMwcuZcApm4yzsF+5teLi2p+y/BhAPNH9dSMLNGnVuQ
GUkvKJIHapYyR8dlY+d2AsJWOi3jBCTTt1Spog+3uGcx5ry8ROK91Xr3XUNntcyG
w2bG06dL44c=
=KY6i
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----