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?
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