D-Bone
Jul 10th '06, 10:57 AM
Mike Shaw, ABC's President of Advertising Sales, said this week that he would love to have the opportunity to shut down the "fast forward" button on users' DVRs. Though he did not claim that commercial-skipping TiVo owners were thieves, Shaw is clearly unhappy with how easy it is to skip his network's ads.
Shutting down the fast forward feature on DVR isn't an easy proposition, though; ABC would require support from DVR makers, who could build their devices to recognize the presence of a broadcast flag. The flag would tell the DVR whether fast forwarding should be allowed during any particular show. But what DVR maker would want to do this? Shaw told MediaDailyNews that he "would love it if the MSOs [cable companies], during the deployment of the new DVRs they're putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button]." It doesn't require a great leap of imagination to suspect that ABC is in such talks with cable companies right now.
Read More: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060709-7218.html
Shutting down the fast forward feature on DVR isn't an easy proposition, though; ABC would require support from DVR makers, who could build their devices to recognize the presence of a broadcast flag. The flag would tell the DVR whether fast forwarding should be allowed during any particular show. But what DVR maker would want to do this? Shaw told MediaDailyNews that he "would love it if the MSOs [cable companies], during the deployment of the new DVRs they're putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button]." It doesn't require a great leap of imagination to suspect that ABC is in such talks with cable companies right now.
Read More: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060709-7218.html