

Let's hack television by getting rid of all commercials - piratelogic
http://maniacalscience.posterous.com/lets-hack-television-by-getting-rid-of-all-co

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cypherpunks01
"OK, I know what you’re thinking. Watching television is probably the most
efficient way to waste your time."

OP then goes on to not even attempt to refute this. I'd rather watch
television die completely and work on something more fun and useful.

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piratelogic
I do not refute this, I simply try to play devil's advocate. In fact, I'm
inclined to agree with you. I don't watch a lot of television because I enjoy
being engaged in what I'm doing, but there are people out there who watch a
lot of television and removing commercials could be a good thing for such
people.

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greglindahl
Let's hack television by ... not watching it at all.

Just imagine how much time you'll have to do stuff.

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lukifer
For those of us who get everything from iTunes/Netflix/etc, this happened
already.

Beyond the personal time cost of commercials, there is a larger societal cost
to commercials which is nigh-impossible to quantify. Swift-boat commercials
kept Bush in office a second term, and soda commercials influence children
towards obesity. They put perceived truth up for the highest bidder, and while
they work imperfectly, billions would not be spend on ad campaigns every year
if they did not yield the intended result, externalities be damned.

I'm not naive enough to think corporate and political propaganda would
disappear without television advertisements. But for better and for worse,
they create a stronger gravitational distortion in public awareness than all
the other forms of propaganda combined.

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zoowar
You fail to address that most people time-shift television and skip
commercials with their DVR.

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Karunamon
Uh.. "most people"? Maybe here on HN, but in the rest of the world out there?
Doubtful.

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protomyth
This is one of those "my technology-phobic Mom does it" examples, so I'm
guessing it's fairly common except for sports.

// Mom is a heavy duty NYY fan so I've seen both behaviors

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kleiba
This must be one of the most content-free blog posts I've read recently. Or
did I miss something? I can't seem to find more meat than what's already
stated in the title.

~~~
piratelogic
You might notice that it's also the only post on the site. I'm new at this. :)

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watmough
Personally, I mute commercials, and I'd rather burn the energy to do that,
than have my consciousness sucked away by being forced to listen to their
drivel.

I only watch a really limited amount of TV anyway. Fringe, Big Bang Theory,
local news, pretty much.

The hard part of this would be connecting some crowd-sourced mute intelligence
to the actual mute button on the TV.

~~~
ars
> The hard part of this would be connecting some crowd-sourced mute
> intelligence to the actual mute button on the TV.

Buy a cheap USB HDTV tuner. Install MythTV. Start watching all 1 hours shows
20 minutes late. Then let MythTV skip commercials for you automatically.

~~~
watmough
I laughed out loud. You are trying to curse me with MythTV!!!

Seriously though, I have run it, even debugged the channel changing under
Linux and stopped it hanging up, but sadly I live out of range of a decent
HDTV signal for right now.

~~~
ars
You can hook up the tuner to your cable as well. Especially if it's digital
cable.

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mattquinn
"Now, I’m going to throw something out there that might seem kind of crazy."

You managed to write a blog post that hypes up your proposed solution to
"hacking" TV...then don't even have a solution? You suggested that we get rid
of commercials. That's not a solution, that's an idea everyone's had at some
point.

Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and is an inherent facet of
capitalism that can't just be "hacked" out of TV, whatever that means.

~~~
piratelogic
An idea everyone's had at some point but done nothing about can't be a
solution?

~~~
mattquinn
No dude, think about what you're saying. The idea you've presented isn't a
solution at all. Simply stating your desire to get rid of TV commercials
without explaining how to do it is not a solution.

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krollew
Nowdays TV became something not worth to have. All those movies, shows, news
and popular scientific stuff you can find in the internet. I don't have TV set
at home and It's great, no shows that make you stupid. Instead there is
silence, good music or nice chat with people you live with. Ow, I like it so
much. :D

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piratelogic
To anyone that's interested: I've updated the article, taking some
recommendations into account and I invite you all to give me one more shot.

This version provides a more detailed solution and discusses other companies
such as YouTube and Netflix and how these companies are trying to solve the
problem.

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smcguinness
I always had the idea to do the reverse of what Shazam is doing with
commercials now. Offer a feature to where you take a fingerprint of
commercials and are able to fast forward through them. Obviously, Shazam has a
bigger market of offering value add to advertisers.

~~~
gibybo
There is actually some pretty good software that does this - it's just not
very common because cable companies control the DVRs and they have to agree to
rules set by the networks.

For example, the open sourice MythTV DVR does it.
<http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/taxonomy/term/4>

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forkrulassail
Why not similarly - create a Chrome plugin - that clicks on all ads (for sites
you visit) yet, does not display any?

Thereby funding the content you live, yet killing the ad-flocked web

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dethstarr
Let's hack television by getting rid of television.

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icegreentea
What the hell does "hacking the norm" even mean? What the do you mean "hack
television". What does hacking even mean in this context? Is it a quick and
dirty fix that addresses the main problems without heavy consideration of side
effects, is it malicious action through unintended use, or is it a vague call
to action?

All I see is the identification of a problem, and a half assed solution that
doesn't even address the reason why the problem exists in the first place. If
this what hacking is, then I don't want you, or anyone ever hacking that would
effect me. I would settle for good old fashioned change

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sliverstorm
_What the hell does "hacking the norm" even mean?_

Anymore, I feel like "hacking" has simply become a generic verb for a person
or project that wants to sound edgy.

~~~
buu700
Kind of reminds me of the term "hackathon" between my circle of friends. When
the term first entered our lexicon, it specifically meant "a 24-hour software
design and implementation competition in which participants form teams, chug
unholy amounts of energy drinks, and show off their demos to the audience at
the end of it all". It was brilliant, wondrous, and not a concept to be
trifled with more than once every few months.

Slowly, very slowly, what was once a special event became, over time, "hey, I
have a project idea we could work on together and no homework this weekend;
hackathon Saturday?". That became "let's meet up Friday night for a hackathon
and each figure out a project to work on until the morning". That became "I
have some code I need to work on, and can't stay up past 4, but hackathon
tonight anyway?". That became "fuck Maine, we need to get this CS lab done;
dinner then hackathon for a few hours".

Et cetera, et cetera, until "hackathon" had become sufficiently bastardised at
our hands so as to solely entail taking over a conference room of an academic
building for two hours one night with four six packs of beer and loud music
and not a single one of us even opening a text editor. After that incident, we
finally looked back upon the previous year and understood how our flippant use
of what was once a cool and exciting term had rendered it devoid of any real
meaning.

For a while afterward, unless we were discussing an official sponsored event,
we would make a point of only using the term facetiously as in "party
hackathon tonight!" or "dinner hackathon at Subway".

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gee_totes
It's not TV. It's HBO.

~~~
geetee
Amen. With few exceptions, I refuse to waste my time with mediocre network and
basic cable series.

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rsanchez1
I wonder why he didn't mention Netflix or Hulu or any other such service at
all in that entire post.

