I have a suggestion for the manufacturers of digital video recorders (DVR) that might clear up a very annoying problem. The solution would not require any effort by the cable and satellite companies or TV stations unless they want to benefit from the technology. My wife Carol and I rely on our DVR to record almost everything we watch on TV. We plan our viewing around our activities and schedule. Before DVRs and VCRs, you had to drop everything if you felt compelled to catch your favorite shows. We can binge watch if we wish, but more than that, we can shorten the time it takes to watch a show by skipping commercials. Advertisers don't like it, but Carl Sagan predicted its inevitability in his book, Contact. Some shows have up to 18 minutes or more of ads and announcements in an hour. Currently, I record and watch Penn State football and other sporting events on DVR. I can eliminate commercials, time outs and half times. That's a lot of time gained that you can devote to other tasks, such as writing, playing with your kids or grandkids, or playing Candy Crush (I don't). That's a bane to advertisers, but the horse is already out of the barn.
Here is the annoying part and those who record their programs on their DVRs can tell me if this affects them. The problem is, DVRs rely on a time schedule. That's fine if all programs stick to the schedule. Many times they don't. This is especially true if your program follows a live sporting event, awards show, or breaking news. If there is a tie at the end of late Sunday afternoon, NFL regulation play, you can be sure the evening's prime time shows will begin much later than scheduled. Additionally, independent channels are notorious for not starting on the dot. Your recording of your favorite program might get cut off at the end of an hour and you miss how it ends. Arrrgggh! That's aggravating, right?
So what can be done? It would be easy. Just as most of the millions of products we buy at stores all have a barcode unique to that product, programming and movies could each be given a unique digital barcode of sorts. If you want to record a show, you could still rely on the schedule and use a time related setting the same as before, but additionally, you could select a program code option and the DVR would identify the code and record only that show from beginning to end in its entirety and make auto adjustments when the schedule gets screwed up, no matter when it actually shows. If ESPN decides at the last minute to switch a football game to ABC, the DVR would make the adjustment. ABC owns ESPN which affected a Penn State game recently. The PSU-Indiana game was shown in the advance schedule on Verizon FIOS to be broadcast on ESPN, so I set the DVR accordingly. When I came home, sat down to enjoy the game, I discovered they had moved it to ABC. Instead the DVR recorded the game for I-Don't-Care University.
Who would put the codes into the programming? The producers and owners of the programs could, for example. It shouldn't be that hard to do. There are far fewer programs than there are millions of consumer products that all manage to carry a barcode. They already put lots of data into their digital tracks relevant for technicians and advertisers. Adding a code should take little effort. There is also an opportunity, should programmers decline coding, where the cable/satellite company could add a code to every program that gets logged in. This could be an add on benefit to market their services.
Yes, there are a growing number of options for watching programming--that is if you want to pay extra for the access. Perhaps if TV goes full Internet for all programming, this might resolve itself. But I'm sure cable and satellite still have years left to continue providing TV shows to millions of viewers. Now if you happen to be someone or a company who has the time, money, and patents to invest in creating a digital code, do the right thing and send me a check after you've made a few million dollars off my idea.
