A potentially annoying idea.

Ideas. I have them sometimes. I don’t often talk about them because some of them are like that apple patent I recently read about that forces people to interact with an ad, or their shit will be locked up.

This might be one of those, assuming it doesn’t already exist.

So, I’ve got this DVR through Comcast, and I noticed a few things about it, and it’s given me an idea for a feature it could probably have with a little bit of extra work on…someone else’s part.

If you’ve got a DVR, you’ve probably noticed that show names show up, and change when you rewind past it to a different show. That’s coded somewhere, I’m sure, and sent to the box.

That’s important to know, because that’s basically what my ‘idea’ involves, except potentially a little more complicated…because…lemme think how to word this….

Ever seen an ad for a show and thought ‘yeah, I want to set up a recording for that‘? If you’re like me, you don’t want to even bother going in to use the search function, because it’s tedious. And tracking it down in the onscreen guide can be a pain in the ass, too.

So, here it is: let people set up a recording for the show through the ad for the show. A little extra code embedded in the ad that would let you easily set up a recording for that specific show.

I can see the potential for an evil side to this, but…I kinda want this ease.

Also, if I somehow managed to think of it first, I totally want paid.

2 thoughts on “A potentially annoying idea.

  1. FWIW, Tivo already has a patent on the idea of embedding information in advertising that could present an option to a user — you may have seen them as “Press thumbs up to record this show” that a couple networks used back around 2002-2003 ( if you had a Tivo ) for promos of other shows on the network. I’m not having any luck finding the patent atm, but I seem to recall that the networks paid Tivo a license fee to present them, and that the broadcasters had to work with Tivo to make it work since the video signal only embedded a short code ( in the CC4 channel, I think ) that mapped onto some previously fetch information about what to do with the Tivo retrieved during a nightly call.

    -Keith

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