On Tuesday 23 October 2007 13:36, Brian Butterworth wrote:
> Without doubting that it's a good idea in principle...
...
> After all, what facilities would you need on a Sky box to do it?
Sky+ box of course.
>
> > * Second tuner that's usually idle
> Ah, and being used to provide the EPG, of course, as it is not cached in
> the box. Try recording two things at once and then using the EPG on a
> Sky+ box - you get a "oh no you don't message".
So, in short, you're saying that they can't change the way they can use the
box? I don't buy that for a second. :-)
The usage of the second tuner therefore becomes something like:
* If not recording,
* If not in EPG,
* Periodically, scan channels, grab frames, dump to disk
> * A disk store (got that)
>
> Which can't be used by interactive services... sorry.
Who said anything about this being an interactive service?
> * A means of storing capturing images from the transport stream (got
> that)
>
>
> In fact, you cannot do this.
*I* can't you're right, but it runs software. Software can be changed. If Sky
wanted to do it, they could. (eg, it changed when they added the Anytime
service)
> * A means of resizing images (the interactive portion requires that)
> The images cannot be captured in the first place, so you may be able to
> blitter, but you have to do it "by hand" too...
Not exactly difficult.
> > I'd be very surprised if a Sky+ box couldn't be modified by Sky to do it.
> > The
> > advantage of doing it in the box I suppose is that it'd be able to pick
> > up your favourites (if set) and what channels you're subscribed to.
>
> If Sky could do this, they would have already done it, it's been around
> since 1998...
Not necessarily - they might not simply have thought it worthwhile.
> (nb, I'm not talking about a mosaic of small video clips, rather a mosaic
> of
>
> > images, which is much more trivial, and is taken at a sensible point in
> > time,
> > potentially just as useful. Unless it hits an ad.)
>
> I'm not sure how useful...
See - that's what I meant above when I said they might not have thought it
worth while :-)
> On the subject of favourites, I just wish that the Sky box tracked (by
>
> > didn't
> > share) what channels you normally watch by frequency and then maintaine
> > (but
> > didn't share!) a menu sorted by least/most frequently used channel.
> > (which gives you an approximation of your favourite channels for free) If
> > you do that using the stats from a ring buffer (as well as an historical
> > ordering),
> > it tracks how your tastes change with time pretty much for free, keeping
> > it
> > relevant. (result from web caching & UI window buffer placement caching)
>
> If the damn boxes would allow you to remove the channels you don't
> subscribe to from the EPG, we would be onto a starter...
Not quite the same, but the grid view of favourites is pretty close. ie press
"tv guide", press blue button ?
Favourites themselves would be irrelevent with a LFU-time option of listing
channels, and it could also be ordered by the likelihood you are to want to
watch the channel. You wouldn't see channels you're not sub'd to because you
wouldn't watch them.
However, Sky might not like that because it discourages you from knowing what
you're missing - cf the interleaving of the Sky Movies HD1,Sky Movies SD1,
Sky Movies HD2, Sky Movies SD2 channels. By "forcing" you to skip past them
its a constant reminder that you *don't* have Sky HD (if you don't :) ).
(favourites do enable that, but I've no idea how many people use favourites)
Similarly if you could look at a grid of video and see that there was nothing
worth watching on, it'd reduce channel hopping and accidental advertising
somewhat. Again, not necessarily in a commercial operator's best interest.
Michael.
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