BSkyB patents ad skipping for digital video recorders
Apparently BSkyB, which operates the Sky satellite TV service which is popular in the UK and elsewhere, has obtained a patent for using a digital video recorder to automatically skip over commercials when recording a TV show. We won't get into the whole deal about how ReplayTV already had something similar years ago, mainly because what's really interesting is the prospect, however slim, that they might actually introduce this as a feature on Sky Plus, the digital video recorder they offer to subscribers. The idea is that they'd maybe do it in order to attract new customers to the service. Obviously the channels they carry might not exactly be pleased, but Sky itself only gets about 10% of its revenue from advertising and so has little to lose themselves if ad skipping catches on. It's hard to imagine anyone being ballsy enough to actually piss off an entire industry like this, but BSkyB is controlled by Rupert Murdoch (who also controls DirecTV), and if anyone has the hubris to take them on it's him. Though that said, Sky has made it clear that they have no plans to add automatic ad skipping to their DVRs, at least for now, and would only be interested in licensing the technlogy to others.
[Via TechDirt]
