TV ad blocker and program concaternator
A TV / satellite recorder that can discriminate between program material and unwanted advertisements and while recording, reject the adverts and rejoin the program segments so that when the transmission is played back, you see only the desired program. This could be an add-on unit that is connected between the Sky box / Freeview / TV tuner and the TV display.
Possible methods: At its simplest, an ad discrimination on the basis of audio amplitude - here in UK ads are noticeably louder. Perhaps better, it could work as AdBlocker does on your PC and compare the incoming data to a list of profiles of known ads. Better still, as this device is a recorder, an algorithm could be developed that analyses the entire audio and video data stream such that it can pick out segments of ads. Since ads will always precede the program and then occur at regular intervals throughout (seems to be every 15 mins on the Sky channels I watch), the algorithm could use this in a predictive way to increase the probability of identifying the ad successfully.
Any talented programmer fancy a challenge?
Discussie (2 opmerking(en))
NECV20 11 jaar geleden
Almost all television programs have a logo on the screen (mostly in the leftupper or rightupper corner).
And ... during the ad-block the logo is not there!
The logo is constant, as if glued to the tv-screen.
So, if you have a piece of electronics which is able to read the, lets say the first 50 pixels of the first 50 lines (and as a extra the last 50 pixels of the first 50 lines, and do some recognition algorithm on these 2500 bytes, it would be possible to say if it is a program or a ad.
2 times 2500 bytes (with colourinformation of a pixel - or better perhaps three colourbytes per pixel) can be hold in a microprocessors RAM quite easely.
Furthermore, the logo is stable on the pixels. So the most easy algorithm would be like; if x % of the pixels is the same during y picturesframes, it is a program. More advanced algorithms can use different colour schemes.
I can help out with these algorithms, but how to get the pixelinformation from a televisionsignal into a block of RAM in a microprocessor, I am at a loss. How do these digital TV'sVCRs receive their information? Is it like the old VGA spec?
NECV20 11 jaar geleden
Almost everybody thinks that audio amplitude during ads is higher..
But actually, if you measure it, it isn't.
What is done, is that within the amplitude certain techniques are used to make the sound to be louder to the human ear. It has something to do with how ears and brain respond to certain frequencies.
And sometimes ad-makers are even clever enough to make there ad almost without sound.
The only way to get somewhere is to analyse the soundspectrum extensively, and fast too, to make out if a certain technique is used. And of course we will miss that super action scene in a film or documentory that uses the same technique.
nigelmercier 12 jaar geleden