This is really a tangent. Imagine if there was a flag for the first time a commercial aired. Lets say it was shown first on the Uncle Billybobs All-time Polka Extravaganza showing at 6AM monday morning which, surprisingly, I did not record. Then every other time it showed, even in PTAT it would not be a new commercial anymore and hence would not record. It would be a repeat. I know that there is not a flag that tracks every user's first time viewing of each commercial. The idea is impractical.
Team Summit - General Assembly
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This is really a tangent. Imagine if there was a flag for the first time a commercial aired. Lets say it was shown first on the Uncle Billybobs All-time Polka Extravaganza showing at 6AM monday morning which, surprisingly, I did not record. Then every other time it showed, even in PTAT it would not be a new commercial anymore and hence would not record. It would be a repeat. I know that there is not a flag that tracks every user's first time viewing of each commercial. The idea is impractical.
I am not complaining.I think AUTOHOP is a great idea. If it is possible, I am asking for an upgrade. If it so dumb a request, why do the allow it for recording programs. There is always someone wanting to belittle others who think differently than them.
He just replied.....
You are conflating "free" for you as a private citizen and "free" for other folks to make money from. Dish's most popular programming by a HUGE margin is network stuff. If they didn't have the locals, their subs would go way, way down (people just want the convenience of using the same input/gear for all of their programming). Our product adds the bulk of the value they offer to their customers. Is it fair they get to double dip (sub revenue and spot revenue) while we do not?
We local broadcasters are in a squeeze. We started getting retransmission revenue in meaningful amounts in the past 6 years or so, and now that it's an expected thing, our parent networks are expecting us to kick more and more of it back to them so they can continue to invest in more programming. None of us local TV guys are getting rich from retrans, I can guarantee you that. We are stuck because without our networks, we don't have the audience we need either, so we have to pay our share and shut up about it, and that new cost is what forces us to play hardball when it comes to retrans.
All we have is spot revenue these days, and if that deteriorates any further, we will go out of business. Simple as that.
Your answer to him, and It's actually good to see someone inside talk about it, is if you give up the monopoly of the DMA, let us pick what affiliate we want, then we can talk about more money for the locals to be carried. Until then you are protected, in fact even more protected, someone with satellite can't get a distant channel even if they are in a "White" zone. (So no signal available over the air) Your signal is supposed to be free in exchange for that.
I checked out the hopper they have on display and the auto hop worked. I did notice that it played a few seconds of the first commercial but then it skipped right to the beginning of the show. How cool is that.
Great reports guys! Need more info on integration, time frame for OTA. TVJapan in HD is a good start!! PLEASE do EuroNews in HD!!! PLEASE!!
I'm surprised something about this had not been worked into the retrans agreements already. Seems shortsighted on the provider's side. Dish is not the first one to try this. They may just have to live with it until the current contract is up.
Even though ReplayTV died before the court case played out, I'm sure it gave Dish an insight into arguments the networks may have. Replay didn't have retrans agreements to contend with though.
Ya know the auto hop effects small businesses like mine too because we advertise on our local stations. this will be interesting. I think it's a huge advantage dot Dish to get customers now.
Probably why you have to wait until 1am to have the autohop. That way it is pretty much past the same day DVR ratings. That is the only metric advertisers really count.
It is so dumb a request because there is not, and never will be, any indicators in the programming or guide stream specifying what commercials are being aired, let alone whether a particular commercial is "new" or not. Nagannahappen.
I think that's the point. It may not be a long-lived feature, but for the next year or so it will bring in subs until they either have to slowly remove to renew retrans agreements or en masse as part of a larger settlement. If we know anything, Dish is not afraid of litigation.
And from a PR perspective, a court battle over this would not be a bad thing for Dish.
JM42 said:
It may not go away either. As far as we know Direct and the cable companies with start their versions of it. Could be a common feature in the future.
n0qcu said:
It now works for me too! It didn't work a couple of hours ago, but it works now!
Works pretty well! I do get occasionally a second or two of the commercial during the hop, but no big deal!
Many PTAT recordings from yesterday have the Hopper icon, but not all of them.
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This doesn't "feel" like something D* would do, but you never know. They may be content to sit back and let Dish take the heat and see how it plays out.
It may force networks to get more inventive with how they do commercials. I remember when LOST was on, during one of the seasons they would randomly add LOST fake commercials to entice people to watch the commercials to get more details on the show.
-Mike
-Mike
i believe broadcast networks get paid on DVR viewings of commercials in the first three days. It may not matter to the advertisers, but it matters to the networks.
The problem is if they get sued or forced to remove the feature, there will be a lot of pissed off customers that signed up solely for that feature.
I believe there is a background process scanning the stored MPEG4 recordings looking for commerical cut points, which may explain why not all of your recordings have the icon yet, and it would also explain one of the reasons why the feature isn't available until the PTAT block is over (after 1AM).
