Thread: "Creatives" in advertising

Aw, crap, Lig, have been taping this series (have the rest on DVD)

Originally Posted by bennylaird

Heard that only 400,000 tuned in for Sorpranos so they relegated it, will probably drop it soon if it doesn't make them money.

Thats what happens when they start the series of at 20 to 11 on a wednesday night, so naturaly its to late for most, then chanell Eddy then decides because no one is watching they will put in on at midnight. All the other crap they show early and all the good stuff they send to the graveyard shift.

I bet if they put on crap like Dancing with the so called Stars at 11pm no one would bother watching

Originally Posted by scooter

Aw, crap, Lig, have been taping this series (have the rest on DVD)

Hope you havnt been tapping it on a Wednesday night:eek: This is gaining pace and will again be the best quality show for the year. I also have the rest on DVD. Every now and again ill pull out a series of Sorpranaos or 24 and start on a Friday night and watch the entire lot in one go:eek: Taxing but a great way to watch it.

HBO makes great dramas, do you watch or tape OZ? That is the most full on show ever to be shown here on telly.

Ok remain calm this is a hijack!

I feel like a hypocrite but anyway..........My work involves television advertising yet I detest ads in the programs I watch. Don't know how I live with myself. Oh wait, yes I do, I dont watch them.

This may be a bit drastic for some but my solution is a HTPC and some open source software and voila! No ads. At the worst a press or two on the Skip button on the remote and gone.

Advertising is a necessary evil and as long as companies can use it to make a dollar we will be inundated. FTA TV is free due to advertising revenue. It's not 'free' - the price we pay is having to put up with ads.

I'm not a Foxtel subscriber but that's when I would get cranky. They want you to pay for content *and* be subject to advertising? Two revenue streams for them.

While we have only three major commercial networks in Aus with an increasing demand from advertisers the shennanigans of the networks will continue.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Bleedin Thumb

:eek:

Mate what will you do if they repeat Sharpe's War IMHO the best peice of TV made since Napoleon invaded Spain.

I must agree that "Sharpe's War" has been superb. I also enjoyed greatly the similat historical drama "Hornblower". Great TV, unlike most of the US sourced garbage...

What I intensly dislike is when you are watching a programme and the programmers cut the ad's in randomly, our station even cuts off ad's with another ad :mad:

Originally Posted by Glenn_M

This may be a bit drastic for some but my solution is a HTPC and some open source software and voila! No ads. At the worst a press or two on the Skip button on the remote and gone.

Glen, I'd appreciate a bit more info, perhaps a link. Are you using a HTPC (home theatre PC?) as a recorder then overlaying that with some sort of ad identifying s/w?

Hi Groggy,
Yep, using a HTPC to record DVB-T (DigitalTV).

There are a number of options for detecting and removing ads from recorded programs. For those using Microsoft MCE then the DVRMSToolBox + Crunchie combination does the trick. Can also use ComSkip with some applications.

These work by post processing the recorded TV file, detecting the ads and either marking or deleting the frames.

However, I am using MediaPortal - the most brilliant (and open source) media application on the planet. An new TV engine is due soon so I am not mucking about with post processing at the moment.

MediaPortal allows you to configure the keys on the MCE remote to 'skip' 15, 30, 60, 180, 300 seconds etc.

So when watching a recorded show (most of our viewing is these days. Just tell the electronic program guide what shows we want to watch and the machine records them whenever they go to air. When we wantto watch TV, just look at what was recorded over the last few days - pick a show and away we go). When an add break appears, 4 taps on the skip key, jump three minutes and keep watching. Jumps back and forth instantly.

For live to air TV, we just timeshift the program and start watching about 20 minutes later. So we start 'taping' an program at 8:30, start watching about 8:50, skip the ads and finish the show when it finishes at 9:30.

At the moment MediaPortal is recording in Micro$oft DVR-MS format which limits the use of the commercial skipping software as most works either in .TS streams (ditigalTV) or MPEG2.

As said, I have used post processing before but the present issues with the DVR format and the ease of configuring skip times on the remote havent made me revisit it yet. My kids are showing more interest in TV these days and I'll be buggered if I expose them to the childrens TV advertising barrage. So I'll be looking into it again soon.

The new TV engine for MediaPortal will provide some further options that I'll look into when released. MediaPortal is still in a development phase but I have been using for about 18months now with little problem. If you're interested check out

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Cheers,
Glenn

What's TV? :confused:

Only gagging, but not by much since we don't even own a TV. Have a TV board in the computer here, but I use it maybe 4 hours a week (movies) and Mrs. Schtoo watches it about the same for other things.

I don't think I will ever go back to watching the stoopid thing, since I do not miss it and don't really have enough time to watch anything anymore.

I think there is a bunch of "24" DVD's kicking around, some "Lost" and other things, and we just don't bother since the little fella arrived.

We did chew through "24" in a week or two though. 4 season's worth...

And You tube supplies me with adequate "Top Gear" bits, since the fools won't put it on DVD...

So, why bother watching it at all? If I had a shed just outside, I wouldn't even bother with the TV card in the computer.

the price we pay is having to put up with ads

No, the price we pay is having to pay more for the stuff we buy so that we can keep you and your mates in chardonnay and lattes

Originally Posted by silentC

No, the price we pay is having to pay more for the stuff we buy so that we can keep you and your mates in chardonnay and lattes

More like beer and tools and who would deny me those?

Glenn, thanks for posting the info

What other hardware/software requirements are there? Do you have to have MCE or can it be done with XP?

Is it a digital TV card you're using, or both dig. & analague? I assume you need a truckload of hard disk space.


Cheers mate...............Sean

More like beer and tools and who would deny me those?

But if we didn't have advertising, you would have to get an honest job and beer and tools would be cheaper for all of us

It's a wonderful scheme though, isn't it? Companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars every year advertising their products so that they can sell more, but consequently they have to factor that into their pricing.

So us poor mugs who hate ads and never watch them, pay for their production. Not only that, but we also pay for the purchasing of programmes, making of new ones, the salaries of all the people who work for the TV stations, the various boards of directors, the freelance journalists and photographers, the marketing people in the companies who advertise and so on.

Meanwhile there's a whole industry based around advertising, and if you can believe the stereotype, a lucrative one.

Makes me think that people who watch the ads are the sensible ones. At least they're getting something for their money.

Scooter,
Hardware and software are somewhat related to the choice of operating system and application you make.

For me, I run MediaPortal as the media application on Windows XP machine which is:
2.4G Celeron P4 (plenty power)
512 MB RAM

Video card are an issue but do not need to be grunty - just need to support DX9. I started with a ATI 9250 but now have a passively cooled ATI9550 (needed DVI out connector). So cheap is good here.

Disc space is the biggest issue really. Digital TV / Movies can chew up lots of space. Depends on how much you want to store. I get by easily with 120GB drive and just transfer shows I want to keep to DVD or my fileserver.

Tv Tuner is a Dvico Fusion Plus card. Various applications allow you to use either digital / analog or both. I found digital has a lower CPU load as the signal does not need encoding (and I only had a software encoding analog card). Sound is way better from the digital card as well.

Will be getting a second tuner (or dual tuner card) soon.

I output sound directly off a SPDIF header on the motherboard to a Sony home theatre amp. Reduces CPU load again (therefore heat and noise).

Whole thing controlled by a $60 MCE remote control (I dont use the MCE operating system, just WinXP)

Other requirement are the codecs required for the various plug ins that MediaPortal has but that is all configurable and up to you.

Hope that helps. Feel free to PM me if you'd like more details

Glenn