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Television Media Technology

TiVo-Like Service Coming To Australia 121

Posted by timothy from the escape-the-primetime-shackle dept.
rosy writes with good news for Australian television watchers: "CNET.com.au is reporting that a TiVo-like service will be available in November this year. Dubbed ICE ("Intelligent Content Engine") and developed by Peter Vogel, the technology will be built into set top boxes and personal video recorders to skip ads or lower the volume, view electronic program guides, etc. The article states that the service will cost $2-3 per week with the service launching initially in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong."
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TiVo-Like Service Coming To Australia More

TiVo-Like Service Coming To Australia

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  • Oz Tivo (Score:5, Funny)

    by mongrol ( 200050 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:15AM (#9819801)
    Perhaps, Australia being upside down, Tivo make work the opposite and actually put decent programming onto the TV rather than take it off.

    • Re:Oz Tivo (Score:2, Interesting)

      by weighn ( 578357 )
      not a chance - Murdoch or Packer will buy it before its wings dry. Then its just another outlet for Fox or 9.

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by incog8723 ( 579923 )
    Dubbed ICE ("Intelligent Content Engine") and developed by Peter Vogel, the technology will be built into set top boxes and personal video recorders to skip ads or lower the volume, view electronic program guides, etc.

    When did pr0n start having ads in the middle of the show, and why would you want to lower the volume?

  • Ads and Spams (Score:2, Interesting)

    by usefool ( 798755 )
    While Vogel didn't reveal much of the technical detail behind how the ICE system works, he did state that it was backed up by live monitoring -- so presumably he'll be looking to hire people to watch solitary TV stations 24/7 -- to enable the system to react automatically to ad changes, or late running TV programs.

    If spams are anything like ads, maybe it's time someone looks into doing something similar (live monitoring) for spams.

    • Re:Ads and Spams (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rosonowski ( 250492 )
      I think the trick is that there's a breif pause between the show and the ads in which there is a black screen. It detects this black screen (and probably some other stuff imbedded in the signal) and knows to mark it as the start of the commercial, and then waits for the other black screen signal to mark it as the end of the commercial.
    • If spams are anything like ads, maybe it's time someone looks into doing something similar (live monitoring) for spams.

      Yeah, we really need live monitering stations were people sit and watch/read every email.

      Oh wait we already have that. They just call it Echelon.
    • If spams are anything like ads, maybe it's time someone looks into doing something similar (live monitoring) for spams.

      news.admin.net-abuse.sightings

  • TV (Score:5, Funny)

    by khazan ( 31260 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:18AM (#9819809)
    It's almost enough to make me wish that I watched TV.

    almost.

  • Cyberpunk (Score:2, Funny)

    by MikeHunt69 ( 695265 )
    Will the boxes be black?

  • That's not like TiVo... it's like ReplayTV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:18AM (#9819811)
    The addition of volume-leveling and ad-skipping features seems to imply that this service is going to be closer to the original ReplayTV units rather than TiVo units... ReplayTV of course at one point in time was a sister company of the Rio brand of MP3 players and always has had a reputation of being the "screw the system" DVR as opposed to TiVo who co-operates with advertisers and broadcasters.
  • It's about time something like this came to Oz.

    Only problem is that the very narrow 'fair dealing' defence in the copyright act might not even allow the sort of home copying allowed in the US under Betamax.

    If that's the case, this thing could have an unfortunately short life... :(

    • Well from what I recall living in Australia, its perfectly legal to record a show to watch later as long as you don't go around distributing the copy.

      Now getting rid of those ads, would be a nice feature most of the time but sometimes there are ads that I wan't to watch that tell me if a show has moved or something, or perhaps a new show I am interested in.

      However I don't watch enough television to warrent such a service so I think I might skip it for now. I do have a digital television receiver (becau

      • Re:About time -- but will it be legal? (Score:5, Informative)

        by skribe ( 26534 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @04:09AM (#9819930) Homepage
        Well from what I recall living in Australia, its perfectly legal to record a show to watch later as long as you don't go around distributing the copy.

        Actually, that is not correct. According to this pdf document [copyright.org.au] you need permission from all the copyright holders to legally copy a television show in Australia. There are exceptions (such as educational purposes) but they don't include for personal use only. This still hasn't stopped millions of VCRs (note the R for recorder) from being sold in this country. I doubt it will stop the Aussie version of the Tivo.

        For more information of Australian copyright I suggest The Australian Copyright Council [copyright.org.au].

        skribe

        • The law is a bit contradictory to this fact sheet, as this clause indicates.. it is legal to make copies of tv broadcasts for private or domestic use..
          COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 , SECT 111 [law.gov.au]
          Filming or recording broadcasts for private and domestic use
          (1) The copyright in a television broadcast in so far as it consists of visual images is not infringed by the making of a cinematograph film of the broadcast, or a copy of such a film, for the private and domestic use of the person by whom it is made.

          So, maybe it'
          • I wrote to the copyright council to get a clarification. Their reponse follows:

            Unfortunately, the section of the Copyright Act to which Mr Kruse refers (section 111) has been read out of context.

            As you are aware from our information sheet 'TV programs: home taping', a TV broadcast can contain a number of different copyrights. For example:

            - copyright in the broadcast signal from the television station;

            - copyright in music and recordings on the soundtrack;

            - copyright in scripts;

            - copyright in the film

    • I don't think its the copying of shows that is the issue in oz.
      The tv market in Australia relies really heavy on advertisers.

      What are the chances of this becoming an election issue?
      Under its current policies, including an opposition to a 5th commercial free-to-air station, This department would not be in favour. [dcita.gov.au]

  • who wouldn't pay for no ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoFiS ( 185779 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:19AM (#9819816)
    I'd pay that just to have advertisements taken out of my daily TV...infact it's one of the main reasons I like the ReplayTV 4000-series, you can just have it skip the ads all-together.

    And for those of you who enjoy commercial breaks so you can run and get more chips or ice cream...remember, you can always just pause it!

  • Lowering the volume on ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:20AM (#9819818) Homepage Journal
    Personally, I'd love a feature to automatically lower the volume on ads, to save me doing it manually.

    I have noticed a disturbing trend on British cable TV channels where adverts are considerably louder than the main programmes, presumably to try and grab your attention. In reality, it's just annoying.

    I normally channel surf or watch five minutes of a rolling news channel anyway, although now a lot of channels seem to have syncronised their ad breaks to try and stop you doing that. I expect such a feature would come under a lot of fire here (and probably in Aus too) from the very people who make it necessary.

    One question though: how does it detect adverts?
    • I RTFA'd :)

      They say it'll have live monitoring, that they'll hire people to watch a channel 24/7.

      I'd love this, I hate that TV channels are pumping up the volume during ads (or turn it down during shows, I'm not sure). I'd sign up $10-12/month easy.
    • Yeah, they do that on the terrestrial channels too. Bit of a stupid thing to do really - previously we'd tolerate the ads, but now they're so DAMN LOUD ALL THE TIME we hit the mute button.

    • Re:Lowering the volume on ads (Score:5, Informative)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:31AM (#9819843) Journal
      One question though: how does it detect adverts?

      There are two methods that I know of. The first is to measure the sound volume - breaks for advertising often will have a pause in audio, then the actual advertising audio level will usually be higher than the programming audio. There was actually such a project (muting audio from commercials automatically) featured in an electronics magazine a number of years back - try looking up back issues of Popular Electronics.

      The second way is to measure the video signal in much the same way as you would audio. There used to be a blanking interval as the advertisments were cut into the program feed. ReplayTV relies on this, along with the MPEG scene-detection algorithms to determine when a scene starts and stops, and whether that scene is likely to be an advertisement.

      Of course, TV stations are wise to this these days. ReplayTV units often have problems detecting commercials because of the stupid station ID logo burned into the screen - this prevents the screen from going totally black, which usually signals a commercial (not always - I've had my ReplayTV mistakenly cut out a chunk of the program because there was a lightning effect). Also, TV stations have begun putting in sidebars and strips at the top and bottom for advertising and junk messages, which also spoils the commercial detection algorithm, and cross-dissolve to commercials, which eliminates a pause in either the video or audio.

      Checking the sound level seems to be the best bet, and if you can couple that with scene detection, and some sort of intelligent algorithm that figures out that the next 5 scenes are a collection of 30 sec and 1 min spots, and are likely to be commercials, that, I think is the way to go. Of course, if you want to do that, you'd probably have to buffer the programming, which then precludes you from channel surfing.
      • Don't point what you're describing at MTV, it'd think all it was was a giant commercial. Hang on....
      • Another method that would work on broadcast channels in Australia a few years ago was to detect a special signal sent in the vertical blank whenever the ads were on so that regional stations could put in their own ads.

        I don't know if it's still there but I imagine it is.
      • Another common method was to look for mono audio tracks. Most programming was in stereo whereas the ads were in mono. Advertisers caught onto this one when a couple VCR manufacturers came out with VCR's that used this trick to mark ads, so now almost all national ads are in stereo, even if it's really just a doubling of the mono signal.
    • Actually the ads aren't louder but they do have more impact. This is mostly due to sound compression, where the softer parts of the ads are raised a few decibels in order to reduce the dynamic range of the sound.

      • Re:Lowering the volume on ads (Score:5, Funny)

        by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:58AM (#9819898)

        Actually the ads aren't louder but they do have more impact. This is mostly due to sound compression, where the softer parts of the ads are raised a few decibels in order to reduce the dynamic range of the sound.

        This is true; the commercials effectively turn the volume of your television up to 11.
    • Personally, I'd love a feature to automatically lower the volume on ads, to save me doing it manually.

      RTFA.

      Vogel showed off the majority of the ICE service's functionality at an event in Sydney this morning, including the ability to control the volume level of advertisements (dubbed "ICE Hush") automatically..

    • The audio and video quality of adverts is probably better than that of the program that you are really watching.

      Maybe someone can with come up with an addition to a PVR along the lines of "Dragon Dictate PVR Add Detection", that decodes the speech in the audio track to both add subtitles as well as looking for words like: sale; cheap; buy now; exdended; last days, and just drop those recordings sessions.
    • Damn straight. When I watched TV "normally", the extra-loud volume just made me jump for the mute button (especially on Channel 4).

      Now I watch all my TV through my MythTV box, which has inbuilt ad-detection and skipping, although it isn't highly reliable outside of the US AFAICT. I wish they'd introduce another detection method to incorporate volume increase (at the moment, it can detect scene changes, blank frames and channel logos).

      Much like pop-ups, trying hard to make crappy garish adverts intrude upo
    • Others have mentioned ways of detection; I have a slightly OT question.

      On the CBC [www.cbc.ca], at the start of commercial breaks in MOST programs, depending on the overscan of your TV you can clearly see a small white square appear in the upper-right corner of the TV screen for a half a second.

      Any idea what this is for? Some sort of cue?

  • For the masses, maybe. (Score:5, Informative)

    by rjch ( 544288 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:26AM (#9819826) Homepage
    ...for those of us who read Slashdot, the question becomes "why?" I've had a PVR at home for the past four or five months, ever since I built my MythTV [mythtv.org] system with KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv].

    With some old leftover hardware and a $150 TV card, it was ridiculously easy to set up, even though a little Linux experience did help. Sure, the commercial detection is "programmed" and prone to miss commercials or (on occasion) think that the program itself is the commercial, but when it's free and includes most, if not all of what these PVR boxes will, having that "up-to-the-second" information isn't really all that vital.

    • ...for those of us who read Slashdot, the question becomes "why?" I've had a PVR at home for the past four or five months, ever since I built my MythTV [mythtv.org] system with KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv].

      I'd pay for the service if it had accurate EPG data. I built a DVB-MythTV box of my own. It's usually great but recently I've had problems with "reality shows" that go overtime. I don't watch reality shows but because they play 15-30 minutes too long it ruins anything I'm recording on that channel aft

    • ...for those of us who read Slashdot, the question becomes "why?"

      For this particular person that reads Slashdot, the full question is "Why don't you shut the hell up until you can actually market a turnkey MythTV box that competes with the likes of TiVo?" I tinker enough with technology all day long and I will gladly pay good money so I don't have to tinker some more just to replace a VCR.

      With some old leftover hardware and a $150 TV card, it was ridiculously easy to set up, even though a little Lin

      • I paid $199 for my TiVo four years ago (running sans guide for the last 3), and when I wear it out I'll gladly get another one

        Sadly, it won't be a TiVo. You must have one of the very original TiVos. Only the first run of the Series One TiVos can be used without a subscription. The rest of them simply go into "boat anchor mode" and won't do anything beyond play what's already there and maybe buffer live TV.

    • "up-to-the-second" information isn't really all that vital.

      With respect, I disagree. I too have been playing with a PVR for a few months, but I did the sums in my head (2 x PCI DVB-T tuners, big HDD, fast Pentium 4, motherboard, ram, case, tv-out card, remote control) and went for a commercial product. The Topfield (Toppy) TF5000PVRt [topfield-a...lia.com.au] cost me just AUD$900, and I couldn't come close to buying the abovementioned hardware for that, even before I got to thinking about the weeks/months of screwing about with an

    • Some enterprising people have already set up sites to modify imported machines, and supply the data.
      tivo site for making australian Tivo [tuhs.org]
      Tivo Weeknees [weaknees.com]
  • I thought tivo was just a box that recorded stuff so you could re-watch it later?
    • It's the name for the box - the TiVo DVR (digital video recorder) - as well as the service that goes along with it. The advantage of the service is that it is automatically able to do things like keep track of the shows you want to record even if the day/time slots change, or automatically record shows with your favorite actors/actresses, for example.

      You CAN use the TiVo box without the service, but you will lose all of the "automatic" functionality.

    • Re:its a service? (Score:2, Informative)

      by carnivore302 ( 708545 )
      It's much more. You can record and watch the beginning of a movie while the movie is still on. It will learn your viewing habits and automatically record all the shows you tend to watch, for up to 140 hours. It's sort of a search engine for your TV really. Plus you can view your photo's and listen to your music on the TV via the tivo. You'll want one :-)


      Click on the Mystery Futures Link [tradesims.com]!
  • I ask myself if TiVO will ever come to Europe - The german tool Fernsehfee http://www.telecontrol.de/produkte/fernsehfee.html (TV Ferry) is of questionable legality - and everything it does is blank out the commercials... (The last court said TV Ferry was legal - see http://www.nzz.ch/2004/07/02/em/page-article9P8G4. html )

    • Re:Europe (Score:3, Informative)

      by boogy nightmare ( 207669 )
      TiVo has been to Europe, It was in the UK for sale for a couple of years but has since retracted it due to terrible sales, those that actually have still have a limited service i beleive. Then of course there is Sky+ which is a satellite box with 2 decoders, one for viewing and one for recording that works exacly the same way as TiVo but is offered by the BskyB corp.

      • The full service is still active in the UK - not limited at all. The UK units still sell at £200+ on eBay, and there is a strong UK community modifying and improving the hardware and software.

        There is also an Australian 'Underground' TiVo scene, using modified UK and US units and 'home-grown' Australian TV listings.

        Find out more at: http://www.tivocommunity.com/ [tivocommunity.com]

      • I made the mistake myself of equating Sky+ and TiVo until I looked into it and discovered there are significant differences which (imho) make TiVo a far better platform.

        Shame that the marketing might of the Murdoch media empire squashed competition in this country yet again on this one. Happily we got hold of a TiVo before they became too scarce and still enjoy the (full) service.

  • Im not sure if it will be a hit here.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xxx_Birdman_xxx ( 676056 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @03:53AM (#9819890)
    I'm in Australia, and to be honest, we dont really have that much free to air television. We have 5 main stations. One of them is the ABC (government funded), SBS a more multicultural tv station (partly gov funded I think) and three fully commercial stations. The ads we have are mostly on the commercial stations.
    I dont think Australians are real heavy tv watchers, as pay-tv here is no where as popular as it is in other parts of the world. And if people dont want ads, they buy pay-tv services. I wouldn't pay a few dollars a week to record/filter ads from free to air tv. I mainly just turn it off.
    So even thought I could see that this would have a market, I don't think it will be as big as Tivo in the American market.
    • And if people dont want ads, they buy pay-tv services. I wouldn't pay a few dollars a week to record/filter ads from free to air tv. I mainly just turn it off.

      I'm not so sure about that - pay tv services here suffer the same extortion racket that they seem to in the US - bundling.

      Until I can order Pay TV a la carte there's no way I'd cough up AUD50+ / month to get collection of crap plus one or two channels of interest.

      But in lieu of that, $2 or 3 per week for ad blocking, plus PVR services? Yes plea

    • if people dont want ads, they buy pay-tv services.

      Could that be anymore clueless? 1> You still get ads on the free-to-air channels regardless of whether or not you have cable. 2> All Foxtel channels have commercials.

      Will Tivo in Australia work? I doubt it. But pay-tv is certainly NOT an alternative to get rid of commercials.
    • I'm about to move back to Aus from the US and was pretty depressed about not having access to TiVO anymore. Hope this takes off and becomes a success. Also it's not JUST for skipping ads, IMHO it's more for making shows available on YOUR schedule, not when the broadcasters decide to air the show. It's very liberating and even in Aus with only 5 channels there's still a lot of content, so I think it'tt be a big hit. Once people understand what it can do, might take a little product education.

    • I may be wrong, but my understanding of cable TV here in Australia has been that our population is simply too sparse to support wide-spread roll outs. Foxtel and a few other operators have cable around the big three cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane... what about Perth and Adelaide?) but everywhere else requires satellite. And satellite is an extra hassle, and I'm guessing is more expensive for the operator.

      But I think you're also right about us not being "real heavy tv watchers". I used to get Foxtel

  • Won't happen in New Zealand (Aussie's neighbour) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @04:02AM (#9819908)
    While it would be nice to think that a similar service might be implemented here in New Zealand, the chances are virtually zero for one reason:

    Copyright.

    The TV broadcasters consider their program listings to be their intellectual property and that they're protected by copyright.

    Similar copyright cases (both here and in Australia) have been won by the companies which publish other collections of data such as telephone directories (example [news.com.au])

    Anyone who attempts to publish TV program schedules without the permission of the broadcaster (and they charge like wounded bulls for giving such permission) will be set upon by multiple teams of corporate lawyers.

    Of course someone intent on providing a scheduling service for a Tivo-like system could always try and buy the rights to publish those listings but I bet you any money you like that those rights would come with the caveat that ad-blocking was forbidden. After all, advertising revenues are the lifeblood of a free-to-air broadcaster so they're not about to allow someone to provide a service that cuts ads are they?

    Personally I think someone should fight the broadcasters over their copyright claims -- after all, copyright is supposed to protect the presentation, wording and format of data, not the facts on which that data is based.

    If I create listings from scratch and simply include the program title, genre, start and finish times then that information should not be covered by any form of copyright.

    But, fighting the corporate sharks costs lots of money so I doubt we'll see a test-case here in NZ anytime soon.

  • (nothing to see here.. move along) (Score:3, Funny)

    by slittle ( 4150 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @04:38AM (#9820005) Homepage
    launching initially in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.
    Woohoo! Suck it, Melbourne!

    regards,
    Sydney.
  • I have been thinking about creating a web service that could be used by PVR software to create an open-source version of TIVO-style recommendations.

    The idea would be to collect viewing habits anonymously, and then automatically create "viewers who recorded this also recorded..." listings.

    A PVR project could then use this data to automatically record shows, or just mark them as recommendations in the Guide. It would not be tied to a specific PVR project, it could be added as modules to GB-PVR [gbpvr.com] (which I use)
    • I understand that some of the Aussie homebrew PVR projects had issues with programme information of that type.

      Not sure who, but someone apparently owned copyright over it and TV guides licenced it from them. PVR websites which screen-scraped were hunted down and apparently its now an arms-race.

      Hopefully someone knows more than me.
  • Why wait? TiVo is already in Australia!! :) http://minnie.tuhs.org/TiVo
  • Isn't that the best part of TV???

  • The same guy who did the Fairlight. Cool! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adam872 ( 652411 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2004 @08:35AM (#9821022)
    Peter Vogel built this awesome instrument (with his business partner Kim Ryrie) called the Fairlight. It was to the best of my knowledge, the first sampler and can be heard on dozens of albums, particularly from the eighties. Even with the advances of audio technology in the last 10-15 years, I still drool over the Series III.

    http://www.ghservices.com/gregh/fairligh/

    In any case (and back on topic), I hope he has better luck business wise this time. As was typical with great engineers with good ideas at that time (think Clive Sinclair) they never had the acumen to cash in on their great technology. Those MBA graduates do sometimes come in handy :)
    • yup, and the Cnet article doesn't do it justice calling it the "fairlight music synthesizer"

      it was the first digital sampler. and CMI ment computer music instrument. in 1979 - mind you..

      and the reprecutions of this invention can be heard to day on almost every music production today. the idea of using a digital representation of sound and playing it back in varing speeds relative to seminotes was totaly revelutionary and had much more of a cultural effect then that video box will ever have..

      it's nice t
  • Can it remove the bugs that now appear to be on all the channels?

    The Aussie TV stations tend to use the cheapest gear they can lay their hands on and that means NTSC/60Hz and that results in some odd issues when you take a video of a cricket ball moving over a field that was recorded at 50Hz/PAL and then converted to 60Hz/NTSC mpeg encoded, moved 1/2 around the world via sat and converted back to 50Hz/PAL. Add in a bug and watching the jitter and it makes me feel like I'm car sick. The result is I don't
  • There seems to be a trend in Australia lately that some local programs will overrun their scheduled spot. What is scheduled to finish so another show can start at 8:30pm, for example, may actually go on for several more minutes. This makes it difficult to set the VCR timer to record. You end up with some of the show before the one you want to record and miss the end of it. I experienced this on Sunday. Bloody Big Brother!

    I have also noticed the commercial networks may occasionally skip ads between programs
  • Why don't they have it in Ayers Rock, Broome and Melbourne too?

    Motherfuckers :(

    *(for reference that's like having it in NYC, Florida and that shitty place they bagged in futurama with the coke bottling factory and the air port and that's it)

    *at least to my approximate geographical knowledge
  • I want that "hunt down other things you might like" feature.

    I'm FAR from being a TV junkie - I (seriously) watch less than 2 hours a week and this is only due to my g/f having the tube on.

    HOWEVER When I do get behind the remote at her place I spot
    fantastic things on ABC and SBS (non commercial stations)

    I normally feel that using the computer is more rewarding than the TV as it's interactive - I spose the PC is the 1970's TV equivelant for kids (but anyhow I'm getting off track)

    What I would like is those
  • Subject says it all. Cable analog viewers in Canada have no TiVo or TiVo-like service that they can buy.
    • Not true. The RCA Scenium PVRs (or DMRs as RCA calls them) work just fine with analog cable in Canada. It uses the Guide Plus+ system for scheduling.

      If you are a roll-your-own type, SageTV, Snapstream BeyondTV, and MythTV all support Canadian listings. These use the Zap2It service.

      Of these, SageTV is probably the most TiVO-like, as it will suggest new shows that you might like. The others don't do this.

  • now we just need something worth recording with this
  • Anyone know if I can use this thing with Pay TV set top boxes - ie Foxtel or Austar? Seems pretty lame if it will only work with the 5 free to air tv stations we have here in Aus...
  • Daaaaaad, can you get me one of those? could become a thing of the past.

    Wooot!

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