No chanel switching during commercials.

Holy Jesus Jumping Christ! WTF is this world comming to?

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. via New Scientist Tech

The day they start doing this, is the day I stop paying for cable. This is the stupidest fucking thing I have seen since the unskipable DVD previews bullshit, and the broadcast flag. WTF! What if I accidentally switch to an infomercial channel? You just going to keep me there forever?

This is not going to fly with the consumers dude. You may be able to sell the broadcast flag to retarded idiots using that "pirates steal our content" joke. And hey, average Joe will not know about the broadcast flag until he tries to tape a show, or points a camcorder at the screen. But this? Hell, you don't mess with people's TV. That's just plain stupid! If a Philips device would do that to me one day, I would fucking take a hammer to it in 5 seconds flat and then I would cancel my cable subscription.

Hell, they will have to modify the Nielsen rating system stuff to accommodate this. Cause, you know - you may really want to watch Lost or 24 but you are stuck on a channel running a 20 minute infomercial that can't be skipped. To bad...

Implementation of this would be the beginning of the end of American TV industry. People would watch less TV, and download more TV shows with commercials edited out. Less and less people would get cable legally, because the a hacked illegal cable box would probably strip the "no-commercial-skip" flags off the signal.

The only winers would probably be the paid subscription channels like HBO - because this bullshit would make them even more appealing than before. They don't have commercials AND you can flip to a different channel whenever you want :P

Tags: tv, commercials, philips, advert enforcement, entertainment, copyright, copyfight