Charged $$ to skip commercials

This is beyond rediculous.
www.newscientisttech.com...

Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over. The flags could also be recognised by digital video recorders, which would then disable the fast forward control while the ads are playing.

Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be "greatly resented by viewers" who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts.

IS this a method by which they use television advertisements to hypnotise us into throwing our TV out the window. I can see this being a huge pain in the @$$

ugh i hate commercials.

I hardly ever watch tv and when I do its at friends house usually and then again its burned dvds.


ahhh the internet

I agree. I don't have cable, and rarely watch network TV. I was thinking about getting cable so that I could watch the fun stuff (standard Discovery, History, CSPAN, the news stations and Sci-Fi). Now I know better. No way I'm going to get cable knowing that I'm going to have to sit through commercials. I would most likely throw it out of the window.

Wow, what a stupid and impractical idea. And they actually think it's going to work? I don't even watch TV anymore anyway. The computer is much more fun.

Where I may have felt slightly guilty about downloading TV shows to my HD, now I think that they've got no right to complain. I think that they owe me. Not that they have taken my time or money yet, but I'll call it a preemptive strike.

i live in china and there are like two hong kong channels that show american shows but the commercials are just to OVERWHELMING! i mean in america i could handle the commercials cuz they showed diffrent commercials every week or day but over here they show the same three commercials over and over again for like years OMFG i feel like throwing the tv out the window and they appear randomly during all of my fav shows aaargh:bnghd: its like those motherf@%&#$^ do it on purpose gosh i miss america good thing iam going back to california this summer and NEVER EVER coming back again yay

[edit on 23-5-2006 by dabomb]

this is a stupid idea. When i watch tv i usually switch to another show while the other is on commercial.