Disney Says, You WILL Watch the Ads

smooth wombat writes "ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney, have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the condition that Cox disable the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads. This is the first agreement of its kind. It only applies to Cox's video-on-demand service and will not affect viewers using DVRs to fast-forward through ads. The companies will also test technology that will place ads in shows based on ZIP Codes and geographic area, and 'freshen' the ads with new ones every few days."

Re:Pay Per Ad

[Ctrl-Z]

Yes, that was covered in the article:

The deal could make it easier for the major networks to make their most popular shows available on demand free, according to the report.

Re:Customer says

[decipher_saint]

IF Wikipedia is correct they own;

Disney-ABC Television Group

* U.S. Television Networks:
o ABC, Inc
+ ABC Television Network
# ABC Daytime
# ABC Entertainment
* Greengrass Productions
* Victor Television Productions
# ABC Kids
# ABC News
# ABC Owned & Operated Stations
* WLS Chicago - Channel 7
* WJRT Flint - Channel 12
* KFSN Fresno - Channel 30
* KTRK Houston - Channel 13
* KABC Los Angeles - Channel 7
* WABC New York - Channel 7
* WPVI Philadelphia - Channel 6
* WTVD Raleigh-Durham - Channel 11
* KGO San Francisco - Channel 7
* WTVG Toledo - Channel 13
+ ABC Radio (ABC Radio & ABC Radio Networks have been acquired by Citadel Broadcasting, the sale has not yet been completed)
o Disney ABC Cable Networks
+ Disney Channel
# Playhouse Disney
+ Toon Disney
+ Jetix
+ ABC Family - formerly Fox Family & The Family Channel
# BVS Entertainment - formerly Saban Entertainment
# Jetix Latin America
# Jetix Europe (Disney 74%, public shareholders 26%)
# SIP Animation (undisclosed minority stake)
+ SOAPnet
* U.S. Cable Network Equity Holdings:
o Lifetime Entertainment Services (joint venture between Disney (50%) and Hearst Corporation (50%))
+ Lifetime Television
+ Lifetime Movie Network
+ Lifetime Real Women
o A

Re:Well, then

[Lumpy]

Sounds great. so how are you going to get your mythTV box to record cable when they encrypt the firewire connection and nobody has cracked a cablecard tuner to work with it?

comcast detroit is ready to switch to all digital cable. your fancy QAM A180 tuner card will not get many channels and your high end NTSC tuner card will get nothing.

thiat is where it is going for CableTV. It SUCKS for Mythtv right now as NTSC is going away and Cable is hell bent on putting unsanctioned PVR's out.

Your only choice is a Tivo Series 3 with 2 cablecard tuners or wait for the Vista-blessed-edition-MCE with cablecard capability.

The cablecard makers have vowed that it will NEVER work with linux or regular unblessed MCE pC's.

Re:Well, then

[russ1337]

>>> ..for people who want a DVR and not an ongoing project...

I'd say that traditionally you would have been correct. But I just built my second mythtv for the house (Dual core, Ubuntu 7.04, Mythtv 0.20). It took me less than a day, and most of that was just messing with stuff I didn't need to mess with. Last time, a year ago, it took about a week.

The Ubunut7.04 recognizes the PVR-150 out out the box and has a full mythtv package in the repo's. It was a case of one click. No more IVTV rubbish and just follow the instructions to get your remote control working. All not that hard even for a noob like me.

Haven't seen any TV ads for a couple of weeks now.... Unlike Cox cable users....

Re:Well then

[mandelbr0t]

I haven't watched conventional television in over a year. All fed by RSS now: Thank you EZTV [eztvefnet.org] for the advertising killing service :)

There are other ways to ignore the ads...

[cjmnews]

10. Take a nap
9. Fix a snack
8. Let the dog out
7. Check your email
6. Get a drink
5. Go to the bathroom
4. Stare into space
3. Read an article
2. Smooch
1. Mute the sound

Re:Well, then

[Dr_Barnowl]

Wifey is the biggest compu-dunce in town, and she loves MythTV.

She likes to sit and flick through the movie listings. She loves the fact that it records every episode of Scrubs.

Extremely high WAF.

Conflict resolution? Three tuners, and a small instruction to wifey to use "find one" instead of "record this". Change the background image? Why the hell would she want to do that?

Seriously, if the moaning about downtime when I'm upgrading it is anything to go by, it's by far the most adored piece of technology in the house, bar none.

Re:hehe: try to parse this sentence from TFA

[capebretonsux]

I second the motion. I'm so sick of commercials appearing more than once during the same commercial break. I'm sick of promising shows being cancelled before their time and replaced with more 'reality-tv' type stuff. (The show that immediately comes to mind is Fox's 'Drive', cancelled after just 3 episodes! I haven't watched any reality tv since the first season or two of survivor.) I'd gladly pay an similar monthly fee for commercial-free programming and an uninterrupted run of a show with no threat of premature cancellation or extended abscences from the air due to 'sweeps'. I like a good story, and more than that, I expect a logical and fitting ending to a story. But maybe that's just me, but I really don't think so. I should think that satellite radio owes at least some of its success to the fact that there aren't any commercials in its broadcasting. So why can't television be based on a similar model? As it is, I've cancelled my cable and gone back to reading books, while waiting to download the entire seasons of the shows I wanted to watch, and enjoying them as I'd like.

Re:Neither is it "content"

[Dr_Barnowl]

The original British version of The Office was a commission for the BBC, by the way. Yes, it was paid for, but out of a budget that costs only $20 per person monthly for that, plus two mainstream 24/7 channels, 6 other channels, 11 national radio stations, a worldwide radio station and regional radio stations covering the bulk of the UK. Most of this I can record in broadcast quality via the DVB-T cards in my MythTV box, free to air, no encryption. Plus the commercial channels, which have to raise their game to live up to this fine example.

They remade it for cultural reasons, of course, but also because it was so damn good. The remake is certainly for profit, but the original was made to fulfil the requirements of the BBC Charter (part of which is to entertain the British public).

Re:Well, then

[Mr2001]

Windows users have very little useful software that is free. Most software is commercial or shareware. Windows users seek to fill the gaping functionality holes with commercial software and get nickeled and dimed (more like $20 and $50) to death.

And if you think it's bad on Windows, just look at OS X.

Say you've got one of the old PowerBooks without a multi-touchpad and you want to set up side scrolling, like every other laptop in the world has? There's a utility for that... if you don't mind clicking away a nag box every time your computer boots up or wakes from standby, or paying for a feature that's included for free on every other laptop (after you paid extra for a feature-rich Apple machine in the first place).

At least on Windows, the good shareware and commercial stuff eventually gets cloned as freeware, if not OSS, because there is a large community of Windows developers who aren't in it for the money (and may not have even paid for the OS or development tools). On the Mac, you're more likely to find a community trying to nag and guilt-trip you into paying for some shareware with a cute name.