[mythtv-users] commercial flagging idea - commercial "fingerprinting"

[Ant Daniel]

I had been thinking about commercial fingerprinting for awhile, I can
see a use for it to (perhaps) revoultionise TV advertising just as
PVR's are revolutionising TV viewing.

I believe it's possible for this to be turned into a mechanism that
improves the effectivness of adverts, and allows for some form of
targeted advertising.

Let me give an example (assuming some form of perfect commercial
detection/fingerprinting system)
You watch numerous programs, without seeing the commercials, but Myth
is quitely detecting commercials and indexing them, and maybe
extracting them on the side.
Then one day your car insurance is up for renewal, your myth box could
now give you a list of all car insurance commercials.

Additionally some form of rating system either from previous viewing
habits, or external recomendations, could give the most appropriate
companies first, e.g. best, cheapest, woman driver insurrance, over
50s, etc.

If there was some form of recommendation system for commercials then
it would be easy to find the funny, unusual or interesting commercials
as well as the ones so bad you just have to watch them.

In theory if this process worked, it would make the commercials more
valuable (at least the good ones, and therefore improve the general
quality of commercials?) and in that case broadcasters or advertisers
should be more interested in letting us know when a commercial break
happens, and the individual commercials themselves. I.E. Closed
caption/VBI identification information as mentioned by Brad).