jasong
04-24-2008, 07:30 PM
I´ve been thinking about the whole Web TV concept(my apologies if this is a brand name, in a lot of cases I have the same problem with technology as with talking about Christianity. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the term ¨Christian Scientist¨ had already been parceled out, so people were assuming a lot more about me then my rejection of Evolution Theory.)
One of the problems that people claim exists with Web TV is that people say it doesn´t contain advertising, so it´s hard to make it profitable. I got to thinking about that, and I realized that the reason they don´t put in advertising is (1) Since it´s recorded, anybody and everybody can fast-forward through it, and (2) When people pay for it, it would anger them if it still had commercials.
I believe I have come up with a partial solution. The trick is that three things need to be done: (1) It has to be free, (2) It has to have commercials, and (3) fast-forwarding should be possible, but not during the commercials. If you don´t want to watch the commercials, then you pay to have them removed, or not downloaded.
Now, of course, people are going to complain about having to watch ¨20 minutes of commercials,¨ but the whole reason for the 20 minutes of commercials is that they don´t get a lot of eyeballs. People do all sorts of things to avoid commercials, flip channels, go nuke some popcorn, use the bathroom to fulfill the need the 2-litre coke caused, play the ¨Let´s see if that thing on the floor is edible¨ game ;) , all kinds of stuff. That time could be up to 5 times less if the eyeballs were guaranteed. For the beginning of commercial, if not the whole thing.
My idea is this: There will be a download service, probably Linux-based to start, and it will be made on budget hardware. The Atom cpu would be perfect for this, I think. It will basically be a cpu made for transporting stuff around and maintaining the OS envirornment. There will be one or more video cards, depending on how many television sets are expected to be supported. Obviously, there will be hard drives. Most importantly, there will be a USB dongle. It will be as cheap as the developers can possibly make it, and it probably won´t have more than about 20MB of storage. It´s main purpose will be to maintain the accounts of various people. You´d be able to limit the amount of knowledge it had about you, though if you were intending to watch a lot of Hollywood movies(or something else that I´m not going to name) you´d have to provide proof that you´re over 18. It wouldn´t even necessarily know your home address if you didn´t want to give that out. You´d fill out a questionaire to tell it the kind of things you like, with the ability to refuse to answer any question on there, and the commercials would be tailored to whoever was watching. I would imagine that the more people that log in for various shows(I mean for the same showing, meaning a party or a family get together) the more the time would be worth to the advertisers.
I´m saying this out of order but you´d basically receive commercials based on how much a specific advertiser wanted to show you something and how much you actually watch. If you were in the habit of only watching Late Night monologues or only watching guests(or bands) then the commercials would be based on the amount of time you spent watching it, rather than the length of the show. It wouldn´t spy on your habits without your permission, but it would track how much time you spend in front of the tv, and you´d basically ¨pay¨ by watching commercials. Maybe 5 minutes of watching would get you 30 seconds of un-fast-forwardable commercial, which you´d receive as soon as a reasonable stop in the action is reached. (Actually, it would probably be an unreasonable stop in the action to increase the likelyhood that you´d stick around. ;) )
I´m sure there are a lot of people that hate my idea, and I´m also sure there are better ideas out there, but as a rough back-of-the-napkin concept, what do you think? I have no intention of attempting to patent the idea, and even if someone steals it, I´d find it hard to get angry. The implementation hassle alone makes it something I don´t want to be involved in.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the way the eyeballs would be guaranteed is that a button would have to be pressed to trigger the commercial. If the button isn´t pressed, then your only choice is to pay or stare at a request to press the button.
One of the problems that people claim exists with Web TV is that people say it doesn´t contain advertising, so it´s hard to make it profitable. I got to thinking about that, and I realized that the reason they don´t put in advertising is (1) Since it´s recorded, anybody and everybody can fast-forward through it, and (2) When people pay for it, it would anger them if it still had commercials.
I believe I have come up with a partial solution. The trick is that three things need to be done: (1) It has to be free, (2) It has to have commercials, and (3) fast-forwarding should be possible, but not during the commercials. If you don´t want to watch the commercials, then you pay to have them removed, or not downloaded.
Now, of course, people are going to complain about having to watch ¨20 minutes of commercials,¨ but the whole reason for the 20 minutes of commercials is that they don´t get a lot of eyeballs. People do all sorts of things to avoid commercials, flip channels, go nuke some popcorn, use the bathroom to fulfill the need the 2-litre coke caused, play the ¨Let´s see if that thing on the floor is edible¨ game ;) , all kinds of stuff. That time could be up to 5 times less if the eyeballs were guaranteed. For the beginning of commercial, if not the whole thing.
My idea is this: There will be a download service, probably Linux-based to start, and it will be made on budget hardware. The Atom cpu would be perfect for this, I think. It will basically be a cpu made for transporting stuff around and maintaining the OS envirornment. There will be one or more video cards, depending on how many television sets are expected to be supported. Obviously, there will be hard drives. Most importantly, there will be a USB dongle. It will be as cheap as the developers can possibly make it, and it probably won´t have more than about 20MB of storage. It´s main purpose will be to maintain the accounts of various people. You´d be able to limit the amount of knowledge it had about you, though if you were intending to watch a lot of Hollywood movies(or something else that I´m not going to name) you´d have to provide proof that you´re over 18. It wouldn´t even necessarily know your home address if you didn´t want to give that out. You´d fill out a questionaire to tell it the kind of things you like, with the ability to refuse to answer any question on there, and the commercials would be tailored to whoever was watching. I would imagine that the more people that log in for various shows(I mean for the same showing, meaning a party or a family get together) the more the time would be worth to the advertisers.
I´m saying this out of order but you´d basically receive commercials based on how much a specific advertiser wanted to show you something and how much you actually watch. If you were in the habit of only watching Late Night monologues or only watching guests(or bands) then the commercials would be based on the amount of time you spent watching it, rather than the length of the show. It wouldn´t spy on your habits without your permission, but it would track how much time you spend in front of the tv, and you´d basically ¨pay¨ by watching commercials. Maybe 5 minutes of watching would get you 30 seconds of un-fast-forwardable commercial, which you´d receive as soon as a reasonable stop in the action is reached. (Actually, it would probably be an unreasonable stop in the action to increase the likelyhood that you´d stick around. ;) )
I´m sure there are a lot of people that hate my idea, and I´m also sure there are better ideas out there, but as a rough back-of-the-napkin concept, what do you think? I have no intention of attempting to patent the idea, and even if someone steals it, I´d find it hard to get angry. The implementation hassle alone makes it something I don´t want to be involved in.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the way the eyeballs would be guaranteed is that a button would have to be pressed to trigger the commercial. If the button isn´t pressed, then your only choice is to pay or stare at a request to press the button.