Broadcasters Sue Dish Over Ad-Skipping DVR Service

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What's next? Broadcasters suing the viewer for skipping commercials? :rolleyes:

In a suit filed Thursday in a Los Angeles federal court, News Corp.'s Fox says Dish's service is unauthorized and violates a licensing agreement between the two companies. It says the service is a form of unlicensed video-on-demand because the recordings are kept on a portion of the DVR's hard drive that is controlled by Dish. Fox only licenses its regular programs to Dish for playback on VOD on the condition that fast-forwarding of commercials is disabled.
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The more the broadcasters open their mouths or let their lawyers out the more I hate them.

I can see over the air content having to make money but when I pay a subscription for something be it cable, radio, TV, Satellite.... then I don't expect to be taken twice. I should be able to skip ads if I like.
 
as crappy as it is, it sounds like they have a completely legitimate complaint if Dish agreed via a contract not to allow it.

Glad I pulled the plug on cable years ago. Haven't regretted it even a little bit.
 
What's next? They require viewers to wear RFID tags and be within 10ft of the TV during commercials or they will charge you fees.

No more bathroom breaks. Hold it in!
 
icehole said:
What good is DVR if you can't fast forward through the ads???
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You can if you record it yourself. The debate here is over their contract for VOD. I don't believe there would be an issue if Dish somehow made this service able to detect commercials and did this for recordings you set up yourself. From what I read it sounds like Dish is in the wrong here from their licensing agreement. What is good for consumers is almost aways fought tooth and nail from the content producers
 
dr.stevil said:
Glad I pulled the plug on cable years ago. Haven't regretted it even a little bit.
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I haven't ever had cable, satellite, or anything else. It was one of those things I felt I didn't need to have in my home so when I set out on my own, I just never bothered with it. There's a TV and a DVD player around my home, but they're rarely used. Once in a while, I'll pay for a month or two of Netflix. I'd use Hulu or watch more Youtube, but they both require Flash.
 
From what I understand of broadcast TV, the signal to local affiliates to start the commercial players is in the sideband of the TV signal. Why couldn't Dish/Dtv/Tivo make their players recognize the signal and offer the user the ability to skip forward the set amount? (assuming the control signal indicates the commercial break length).

BTW, COX's VOD for Fox won't let you fast forward through commercials.
 
Wow, that's a frickin' stretch there Fox.

I hope whatever smart-alec lawyer thought this would be funny gets his ass handed to him by the Judge.
 
az_max said:
From what I understand of broadcast TV, the signal to local affiliates to start the commercial players is in the sideband of the TV signal. Why couldn't Dish/Dtv/Tivo make their players recognize the signal and offer the user the ability to skip forward the set amount? (assuming the control signal indicates the commercial break length).

BTW, COX's VOD for Fox won't let you fast forward through commercials.
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Can't fast forward Fox on Fios either. I was gonna watch some Family guy on VOD, but couldn't fast forward so I said fuck it and found something else to do.
 
Here's my question, do these broadcasters allow Dish to broadcast their signal absolutely free of charge? From what I understand, HELL NO, they pay the broadcaster rights to air their channels on their station. So they're paying for the feeds, they should be able to do what they will with them.

Also, if this is a feature due to their box allowing it, then I really don't see a problem with this at all. The devil is in the details of where exactly the commercial cutting is occurring.

Dish can't catch a break, sometimes I wonder if they're really being bold and pissing everyone off, or do they have a target on their back.
 
Any surprise that they got sued? I mean really?

Its advertising that it edits out ads , what did anyone expect. Direct TV must have the most idiotic Marketing/Research departments to even consider doing this.

While I personally hate TV ads , I'm glad I have my DVR otherwise I wouldn't watch TV and doing the kind of shit Direct TV just did by offering a DVR that fully edits out ads is just prodding the marketing industry to start acting like its own MPAA or RIAA .. last thing we need as consumers is another horrible "in bed with" corporation suing machine like those two awful organizations.
 
All a DVR really needs to deal with ads, is a 30 second skip function. You would have figured they'd have learned their lesson years ago when the TV industry went apeshit because one of the first DVRs(ReplayTV) on the market had automatic ad skipping.
 
I just FF x3 and within a few seconds, I'm through the insipid ads. meh...
 
Jared701 said:
From what I read it sounds like Dish is in the wrong here from their licensing agreement.
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yeah it sounds like the DVD auto records everything so you have 8 days of prime time from 4 networks ready to go.. the legal issues is if that counts as VOD or not.. It sort of sounds like VOD to me, with dish preloading the programing on the users end to stream vs streaming from some main server some where.. In that case it's still VOD and under the terms of how they licensed program to VOD in the first place..

I wonder if a simple yes/no every week asking "Do you want to record everything prime time?" would turn it into the legal DVR style recording? It's strange in a way to see the tech move forward with DVR, HD and VOD stuff and yet move backwards from what we we could do with a crappy VHS recorder..
You would think the networks would love VOD and DVR over all being in most cases your average user can't make a copy of a program to keep or share.. That should be enough really...

as for the industry, these are the same people that tried to push for broadcast "flags" on all digital recording while claiming they would rarely use the -never record- and -record/watch once- flags-.. Oh please, once that tech was out of the bag everything would off been "watch once"..
 
Glyphic said:
Can't fast forward Fox on Fios either. I was gonna watch some Family guy on VOD, but couldn't fast forward so I said fuck it and found something else to do.
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Is that on any Fox channel? I'll have to try that when I get home.
 
Eisenblut said:
What's next? They require viewers to wear RFID tags and be within 10ft of the TV during commercials or they will charge you fees.

No more bathroom breaks. Hold it in!
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What's next? More then likely over the air providers will just about die out once broadband in the country meets an 80-90% saturation point. At that point, smart TV's will be a common household appliance and most TV will be IP broadcasted. Google/(the next)Facebook/etc. will sell your info to them and they'll have just about everything they'll need to keep you interested in watching commercials from time to time... No RFID tags required.
 
I wonder if they did the same thing when VCRs like mine in the mid to later 90's had the "commercial advance" feature when it would after recording going back and flag them, then you could either set it to auto-skip or do it manually.
 
Merc1138 said:
All a DVR really needs to deal with ads, is a 30 second skip function. You would have figured they'd have learned their lesson years ago when the TV industry went apeshit because one of the first DVRs(ReplayTV) on the market had automatic ad skipping.
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DirecTV's DVR's do have a 30 second fast forward button, and have for quite some time. At least when I WAS a DirecTV customer a couple years ago. Not sure if their new whole-house/single DVR setup still has that function.
 
Seraphical said:
What's next? More then likely over the air providers will just about die out once broadband in the country meets an 80-90% saturation point. At that point, smart TV's will be a common household appliance and most TV will be IP broadcasted. Google/(the next)Facebook/etc. will sell your info to them and they'll have just about everything they'll need to keep you interested in watching commercials from time to time... No RFID tags required.
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No they just integrate commercials into TV shows that you are watching, many shows already spam commercials of shows during a show at the bottom of the screen.
 
My understanding was it just automagically strips the commercials from your recording, which, you would have skipped over anyway. They are not removing the ads in the "live" broadcast of the shows. I think this is just the networks trying to get the previous precedent of allowing fast forwarding through recordings revoked.

The TV industry should have started incorporating their products in the shows long ago. Instead of breaking up the shows with commercials, make them part of the shows. I don't watch live shows anymore, everything is recorded. I refuse to sit through 20 minutes of commercials for 40 minutes of show.

Good for Dish! I hope their next step will be ala cart programming. I'd pay a little more for only the stations I want to see, instead the 10 stations I watch (via dvr), out of 120 I'm currently "subscribed" to.
 
VRMan said:
The TV industry should have started incorporating their products in the shows long ago. Instead of breaking up the shows with commercials, make them part of the shows. I don't watch live shows anymore, everything is recorded. I refuse to sit through 20 minutes of commercials for 40 minutes of show.
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The TV industry has been doing this for decades. A few years back it got to the point of being able to digitally edit say... a soda can from one brand to another if an advertiser changed(and probably the dumbest example of this is Demolition Man, where they edited everything from Taco Bell to Pizza hut, including dubbing over the lines horribly and changing all but one backwards taco bell sign on a glass door).

What you're thinking of, is replacing commercials with product placement in the show or movie(which is almost as annoying. Wayne's World did a pretty good job of making fun of it years back). That's not going to happen. They want revenue from 30-60 second ads, they want revenue from ads at the bottom of the screen, and they want revenue from product placement. They don't want to replace a source of revenue, they want to add to it.
 
I have the Dish Hopper and love the auto skip feature for commercials. The feature is not automatically enabled and every time you go to watch a show it asks if you want to use the AutoHop feature. Plus, I have only seen it available the day after a show is recorded, so if you go to watch a show you record that evening, you still have to fast forward yourself.

If the industry wants to try and make their revenue money, how about they just do more product placement in a show?
 
VRMan said:
The TV industry should have started incorporating their products in the shows long ago. Instead of breaking up the shows with commercials, make them part of the shows. I don't watch live shows anymore, everything is recorded. I refuse to sit through 20 minutes of commercials for 40 minutes of show.
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The official standard is 8 minutes of commercial for every 22 minutes of show (including title/credits). So 44 and 16 for an hour. Of course, if you're watching SpikeTV, it's reversed (or close to it). That network has straight-up gone to 10 minute commercial breaks which just beg people to DVR them and fast forward.

It'll be a sad sad day if they ever get their way to disallow the fast forwarding of shows completely .. "rewind live TV! Just remember, you'll have to watch it twice .."

I can understand the OnDemand stuff (NBC does it too, but only with about 2 minutes of commercials for a 22 minute show). It's much more tolerable too, as it's literally like 1 minute breaks and you actually watch the commercials that way.
 
When I pay a subscription fee, I pay for all the television content that I receive. It is up to me, unless stated otherwise in a binding contract, to determine what parts of the received content I want to focus my attention on.

That being said, I think its only fair that the ad skipping software should have a monthly service fee slapped onto it to keep it from taking over all televised content.
 
Salavat23 said:
I think its only fair that the ad skipping software should have a monthly service fee slapped onto it to keep it from taking over all televised content.
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I think it's only fair that you don't pay for content twice with ads and subscription fees.

Visiting my in-laws and watching TV with them is excruciating. Of every 60 minutes of television, 16 to 24 minutes of each hour is advertisements (depending on the program...idiot programming like reality shows get more ads).

It is like paying for admission to Disneyland then being forced to walk around in a Donald Duck costume for 2 hours out of your 8-hour visit.
 
Steve said:
What's next? Broadcasters suing the viewer for skipping commercials? :rolleyes:
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Don't joke. I am AMAZED that corporations haven't forced service providers to install software into the PVR's that block ad skipping. You know that annoying as hell "don't" symbol that pops up when you try to skip the FBI warning on DVD's? It would be a simple thing to install that on PVRs. The day that happens is the day I cancel my cable.
 
If the day ever comes when I can no longer skip or fast forward ads, that will be the day I never watch TV again.
 
Appears to be some confusion here on the topic. The new Hopper system that DISH has recently released gives users the ability to skip through commercial breaks on recordings. It still records the commercials and you can still skip them using the traditional methods of the skip forward button or fast forwarding. The new feature, if enabled, will notify you when it has automatically skipped the commercial break. This only works on recordings after 1 a.m. the morning after it originally aired.

The broadcasters don't like it because it can have a negative effect on revenue and even viewership of new shows since people aren't seeing the commercials.

This is a new feature that has been developed and i've yet to see it in action. I don't recall if it only works on the Prime Time Anytime recordings or on all recordings. Though as someone said earlier, the commercials are signaled by a side band broadcast or something, which may not be there on the national broadcast channels.

FWIW I work for the company...Hopper system is pretty damn sweet for small-medium sized families.
 
Fuck yeah! If there was les money spent on advertising, maybe there would be less shite programming on tv.
 
CBS vod hasn't had commericials, but they don't have all their shows on VOD. They have ads for other programs and sometimes no ads at all.

Fox has commercials but easy to bypass. When a commercial starts rewind around 90secs, then hit the 5min jump button. If you overshot which happens, just rewind till you see the rating icon in the upper left corner then stop.

Only time I don't bother skipping commercials in VOD is if there less than a minute, usually its easier to just watch it than trying to fast forward past it.
 
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