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

[Risto Treksler]

Preston Crow <pc-mythtv05 at crowcastle.net> said:

> > - it couldn't hope to cover nearly enough shows to be useful
> >   (or am i being naive)
> 
> False.  You're being naive.  If it just gets popular prime time network
> shows, that's enough to cover probably 70% or more of the shows people
> really care about.


Kind of like Amazon and iTunes make it possible to access obscure content,
that is not available to people in other ways, MythTV lets people watch
obscure shows in prime time.

I just tend to think that one of the main features of a PVR is that you can
watch political commentaries or real estate or cooking shows or whatever you
like, so that you don't have to watch mainstream fare as much.

I was looking at the program finder and the variety of available programming
is astonishing. Now multiply by the number of different cable/satellite carriers.

I guess I tend to agree that the traditional 80/20 rule does not apply to
electronic mediums such as PVRs.

In other words, I don't think that you can satisfy 80% of people by
fingerprinting just 20% of the most popular shows, as conventional wisdom
would have you think.

Instead of a dozen shows, each with a million viewers
think of a million shows, each with a dozen viewers



Disclamer:
the ideas presented above are heavily borrowed from a wired magazine article 
i read awhile back