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Apple Patent Application Reveals Flexible Integration of Advertising Viewing in Video Files

Aw, now, isn't that thoughtful of Apple?

Just another little gift of lock-in. Because they care. :D

Don't worry, John Gruber is working on a post right now to tell you how awesome it is so you'll feel better.
 
OH!.....so THIS is why they made the iPad! Makes a lot of sense now. :mad:

GeekLawyer said:
Please try to speak for yourself. I want a way to view video content from iTunes that doesn't require paying 1.99 per episode. This is very welcome to me.
Click to expand...

Someone's been well trained..
 
Ad breaks doesn't make a show free. It is paid by the advertiser instead of the viewer. Ultimately the show is paid by the people who purchase the advertised products instead of the people watching the show. I hate this.
 
This is on ITV in the UK web viewing

This is on the ITV version of online viewing in the UK. Its a real pain in the neck, as when you want to catch the end of a program because your sky+ has missed it again you have to watch all the adverts to see the end. !!
 
Raymaker said:
This is on the ITV version of online viewing in the UK. Its a real pain in the neck, as when you want to catch the end of a program because your sky+ has missed it again you have to watch all the adverts to see the end. !!
Click to expand...

Seems like you need to adjust your Sky+ box as I never have issues of it missing the end of programs. Change the setting of how long it records before and after a program is on.

I do however agree that it is annoying as hell especially because the iTV Catchup player is a little flaky so that when it buggers up you have to watch the adverts again just to catch up to where you were in the program.
 
RazHyena said:
OH!.....so THIS is why they made the iPad! Makes a lot of sense now. :mad:

Someone's been well trained..
Click to expand...
By whom was I trained and for what purpose? I don't think the thread should really be about me. I've been paying to consume media in one way or another (through my time by watching commercials or through my money for DVDs or my cable subscription; it's most nefarious when I pay twice by watching commercials broadcast over my paid cable subscription). I welcome a new way to do the same thing I've been doing for decades. I don't see it as a negative. This isn't the result of training. Maybe of socialization in a capitalist economy?

I don't believe this is why Apple made iPad. But if this patent sometime makes its way to iPad, I would welcome any new features made available.
 
GeekLawyer said:
I welcome a new way to do the same thing I've been doing for decades. I don't see it as a negative. This isn't the result of training. Maybe of socialization in a capitalist economy?
Click to expand...

Wow. What a concept! Actually paying for the content we watch... :)

I guess they think it all should be free anyway.

If everyone is skipping commercials, the ads don't reach their intended targets causing advertisers to stop buying the ad space. Like it or not, without funding, the content creators can't make any more content. If our favorite shows aren't making money, they don't last very long.

It doesn't take training to realize that.
 
diabolic said:
If everyone is skipping commercials, the ads don't reach their intended targets causing advertisers to stop buying the ad space.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's turned out not to be the case. There was a lot of talk about the collapse of free over-the-air television some years back predicated around this whole idea. Remember the flap over the early DVR (I forget which one) that had a 30-second-skip button?

As it turns out, free television hasn't collapsed after all. The model works as well as it ever did. Because advertisers aren't actually paying for you watching their ads. They're paying for the network to put their ads into the show, which gives the advertisers the opportunity to be seen. If anything, the prevalence of technology that lets people fast-forward through ad blocks has put pressure on advertisers to come up with more eye-catching images, so they're more likely to pique your interest as you're skipping ahead, making you go "Huh?" and wind back.

To me, the interesting part of this approach (the one described in that patent application I'm sure we've all read closely by now) is that the commercials embedded into a show can disappear after they're watched once. It's not required that they do, but it's one way the patent could be implemented.

Imagine you go to iTunes and download, say, last night's "Reality Game Show." It's free; you don't pay a dime for it. When you sit down to watch it the first time, there are commercials scattered through it, just like broadcast TV or Hulu.

Under the hood, the show is stored on your computer as a bundle. There's a directory, and in that directory is a Quicktime movie of the show itself, one Quicktime movie for each of the commercials, and metadata file that contains information about which segments go where. But that's all hidden from view.

When you watch the show for the first time, the commercials play at those predetermined points. But because they're set to be one-time-only, after each one is viewed, it disappears. It's literally deleted from your hard drive. Once you've watched the show all the way through, the commercials are all gone, and you're left with an unlocked Quicktime movie that you can watch again as often as you want, commercial-free.

That's one way this patent could be implemented. It's not guaranteed that that's how Apple would choose to implement it, if they implement it at all, but they went to the trouble of describing that specific case in the patent application, so it's clear they've thought of it.

The other interesting aspect of this patent is the idea that while you're not tethered to the Internet when you watch the show (it doesn't stream; it's a download), the fact that you played the commercial is recorded, along with possibly a date and time and maybe something like a "liked/didn't like" feedback datum. That metadata is stored as a journal file, then piped back to the server at a later time, when you connect to the Internet. This gives advertisers specific data about which spots are being seen and when, and maybe more information like overall public approval/disapproval. That's valuable information for advertisers, and it makes buying ads that are delivered this way more attractive, business-wise. Which makes it more likely that a service (iTunes or whatever) that incorporates this ad technology would be commercially successful, which means it'll be more likely to carry the content you want to see.

There's more; it's a really interesting patent if you just take the time to read it. Part of it is a system for content providers to upload their own ads. Imagine if podcasters had an easy system for inserting ads into their shows. Many would choose not to, of course, because podcasts are currently either done altruistically or are sponsored. But having that revenue option would mean more people would consider podcasts as profit centers or at least as being revenue-neutral, which ultimately means we'd get more podcast content. More content is a good thing, even if some people choose not to consume it because they dislike ads.

To all the people who said things like "Well I'm just going to go back to piracy," nobody cares. I'm not being rude here; I'm speaking literally. Piracy is viewed in the broadcast industry like shrinkage is viewed in the retail industry. Every retailer knows that for every thousand packs of gum that come in, only 975 will actually be sold. The rest get damaged in shipping, or pocketed by employees, or shoplifted. It's just part of doing business.

If your sensibilities are so fragile that you'd go to the trouble of stealing content which is already being broadcast over the air for free just because somebody dared to talk about ideas for better advertising delivery, congratulations. You're officially shrinkage. Your piracy is a write-off, and the industry basically doesn't care, except at the annual conferences where somebody inevitably gets up and delivers an impassioned jeremiad about how the Internet is a black hole, and content delivery via the Internet is a nothing more than an elaborate going-out-of-business plan.
 
Dagless said:
Not necessarily. We have the BBC here which doesn't show advertising. I tend to avoid shows if I have to sit through adverts now. Nothing worse than getting absorbed into a show only to have meaningless trash piped through every 15 minutes.
Click to expand...

That's because England charges a public radio and television tax that pays for the television shows. I wouldn't mind that done here in the States, but the American public wouldn't go for it.
 
theneweyes said:
That's because England charges a public radio and television tax that pays for the television shows. I wouldn't mind that done here in the States, but the American public wouldn't go for it.
Click to expand...

The American public does go for it. We call it the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 2009 received $400 million from the federal government. The overwhelming majority of that money went to individual radio and television stations that produced shows that aired on NPR or PBS.

The only difference between the BBC and the CPB is that in the UK, there's a specific television license fee you have to pay. Here it just comes out of the big pool of taxpayer money that's used to pay for nearly everything. Well, that and the fact that the BBC is about six kaskrillion times bigger.
 
oh apple, why don't you at least ONCE do something where i DON'T get the feeling you want to queeze out your customers like an orange and make money out of everything we do??? ;-(
 
if tv shows were free on itunes with 2 or 3 minutes of ads i would jump for it. If they make tv shows .99 cents and they have ads. i wont jump for it.
 
Mcgargle said:
Actually, that's turned out not to be the case. There was a lot of talk about the collapse of free over-the-air television some years back predicated around this whole idea. Remember the flap over the early DVR (I forget which one) that had a 30-second-skip button?

As it turns out, free television hasn't collapsed after all. The model works as well as it ever did. Because advertisers aren't actually paying for you watching their ads. They're paying for the network to put their ads into the show, which gives the advertisers the opportunity to be seen. If anything, the prevalence of technology that lets people fast-forward through ad blocks has put pressure on advertisers to come up with more eye-catching images, so they're more likely to pique your interest as you're skipping ahead, making you go "Huh?" and wind back.

To me, the interesting part of this approach (the one described in that patent application I'm sure we've all read closely by now) is that the commercials embedded into a show can disappear after they're watched once. It's not required that they do, but it's one way the patent could be implemented.

Imagine you go to iTunes and download, say, last night's "Reality Game Show." It's free; you don't pay a dime for it. When you sit down to watch it the first time, there are commercials scattered through it, just like broadcast TV or Hulu.

Under the hood, the show is stored on your computer as a bundle. There's a directory, and in that directory is a Quicktime movie of the show itself, one Quicktime movie for each of the commercials, and metadata file that contains information about which segments go where. But that's all hidden from view.

When you watch the show for the first time, the commercials play at those predetermined points. But because they're set to be one-time-only, after each one is viewed, it disappears. It's literally deleted from your hard drive. Once you've watched the show all the way through, the commercials are all gone, and you're left with an unlocked Quicktime movie that you can watch again as often as you want, commercial-free.

That's one way this patent could be implemented. It's not guaranteed that that's how Apple would choose to implement it, if they implement it at all, but they went to the trouble of describing that specific case in the patent application, so it's clear they've thought of it.

The other interesting aspect of this patent is the idea that while you're not tethered to the Internet when you watch the show (it doesn't stream; it's a download), the fact that you played the commercial is recorded, along with possibly a date and time and maybe something like a "liked/didn't like" feedback datum. That metadata is stored as a journal file, then piped back to the server at a later time, when you connect to the Internet. This gives advertisers specific data about which spots are being seen and when, and maybe more information like overall public approval/disapproval. That's valuable information for advertisers, and it makes buying ads that are delivered this way more attractive, business-wise. Which makes it more likely that a service (iTunes or whatever) that incorporates this ad technology would be commercially successful, which means it'll be more likely to carry the content you want to see.

There's more; it's a really interesting patent if you just take the time to read it. Part of it is a system for content providers to upload their own ads. Imagine if podcasters had an easy system for inserting ads into their shows. Many would choose not to, of course, because podcasts are currently either done altruistically or are sponsored. But having that revenue option would mean more people would consider podcasts as profit centers or at least as being revenue-neutral, which ultimately means we'd get more podcast content. More content is a good thing, even if some people choose not to consume it because they dislike ads.

To all the people who said things like "Well I'm just going to go back to piracy," nobody cares. I'm not being rude here; I'm speaking literally. Piracy is viewed in the broadcast industry like shrinkage is viewed in the retail industry. Every retailer knows that for every thousand packs of gum that come in, only 975 will actually be sold. The rest get damaged in shipping, or pocketed by employees, or shoplifted. It's just part of doing business.

If your sensibilities are so fragile that you'd go to the trouble of stealing content which is already being broadcast over the air for free just because somebody dared to talk about ideas for better advertising delivery, congratulations. You're officially shrinkage. Your piracy is a write-off, and the industry basically doesn't care, except at the annual conferences where somebody inevitably gets up and delivers an impassioned jeremiad about how the Internet is a black hole, and content delivery via the Internet is a nothing more than an elaborate going-out-of-business plan.
Click to expand...

Definitely one development to watch.
 
Supermacguy said:
Just an idea,
what if Apple tries to patent this kind of junk just so they can lock it up and NEVER implement it, nor have anyone else implement it?
Like doing us all the biggest public service of not seeing those friggin ads ever, because they could, but they don't.

Chris
Click to expand...


GREAT idea. The world needs a foundation called the "ANTI-SPAM / CRAP Foundation" which is a think tank that registers patents for inventions that will do nothing for humanity except creat money for greedy corporations. Locking them out of using the invention concept for the good of all people.
 
diabolic said:
Wow. What a concept! Actually paying for the content we watch... :)

I guess they think it all should be free anyway.

If everyone is skipping commercials, the ads don't reach their intended targets causing advertisers to stop buying the ad space. Like it or not, without funding, the content creators can't make any more content. If our favorite shows aren't making money, they don't last very long.

It doesn't take training to realize that.
Click to expand...

What really pisses me off is how the ads on television JUMP UP A FEW NOTCHES IN VOLUME so they can make sure you're listening when you've gone to make a cup of coffee or something. Absolutely infuriating I want to punch these MotherF2#@ers in the face.

Example. I've got a 2 month infant trying to sleep and I'm watching a drama show and the people are just talking normally. Im trying to concentrate a little more so I up the volume ever so slightly to better understand. Ad break cuts in and some IDIOT is screaming "ROCK BOTTOM PRICES...ARGGHHHH" , I jump out of my seat from the volume and then baby wakes up. :mad::mad::mad:
 
Vulpinemac said:
While I agree with your basic statement, I don't agree with your sign-off; Apple didn't start this mess, but they're trying to live within it and protect what is theirs.

Fix the patent system. Patents were originally designed to protect physical products from unauthorized duplication and sale. Copyrights were orignally designed to protect intellectual products from unauthorized duplication and sale. Unfortunately, software seems to bridge the differences and that's caused some very serious issues. Either software needs to be reverted to copyright protection (even if it's an application that makes a computer work a certain way) or software needs to undergo a completely separate and stringent vetting process of its own.

Don't blame the salesman, in this case, blame the abusers who have created this fiasco.
Click to expand...

it was always my understanding that copyright wS for creative works- music, book, movie, painting, etc. (not an idea or invention) and patents are for inventions. Which, in the past were more physical, but with the advents of computing, exist a but more in the void as we're using inventions to invent things that only exist within an invention. Software. Bit it seems to all be a fit. Software could be either. A game like doom, should be a copyright. A piece of creative work. But they would apply for patents for any specific inventions pertaining to the creation of doom or any special routines in the program that are new. Maybe first person shooter would be a patent had it been new or touch screen if it had that. Not sure if theyre original or not but just example.
 
Mcgargle said:
The American public does go for it. We call it the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 2009 received $400 million from the federal government. The overwhelming majority of that money went to individual radio and television stations that produced shows that aired on NPR or PBS.

The only difference between the BBC and the CPB is that in the UK, there's a specific television license fee you have to pay. Here it just comes out of the big pool of taxpayer money that's used to pay for nearly everything. Well, that and the fact that the BBC is about six kaskrillion times bigger.
Click to expand...

And they only go for that, because it's implementation is very different from the BBC as you point out. The CPB is an invisible tax whereas the radio and television tax that pays for the BBC is more overt. A more overt tax just wouldn't fly politically - Especially with the scale differences.
 
I'll actually start downloading movies illegally if they implement this for the whole industry.
 
Mad

Why us Brits love the BBC....no Ads:)

Why us Brits pay a licence fee...no ads:):)

Why I will continue to support the BBC.... no ads:):):)

Apple , NO NO NO.......... everywhere i go, i don't want your bloody car/shampoo/sanitary towel/coffee, even in that order. Just go away!!!!:mad:

I want to watch this film in peace, please.

Ahh feel better now
 
For me personally, I hardly watch TV due to the frequency and volume of adverts broadcast.

The only things worth watching are the odd film and football match. I am sick and tired of ******** being rammed down my throat every five minutes.

It seems like most shows lack hardly any content and are just there to fill in the gaps between adverts.

If the content was free then adverts are a necessary evil, but why would I want to pay for someone to try and sell me something I don't want?

Thank god for Iplayer.
 
ctachme said:
So now we just need to find what LOST episode has that exact shot at 8:45 minutes into the show. Maybe it helps that the episode is 43:10 long? LOST marathon, anyone?:D
Click to expand...

If anyone's still interested... :p

I've been doing my own marathon trying to catch up before the series finale (not having watched before) and just finished season 3 last night. :( It's from Charlie's flashback episode #21, "Greatest Hits". I recognized it right away!

There'd better be some good payback for sticking to the series is all I can say - damn the writers for making me care!!!
 
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