You know what the technology world needs? More patents! And since new innovations are difficult to come up with, companies appear to be trying to patent the most basic things they can. In this case, FierceCable is reporting that Time Warner Cable has won a patent to disable the fast forward button on your DVR.
The original patent, filed back in 2007, attempts to cover all sorts of “trick play” functionality, including “rewind, pause, skip, and/or fast-forward.” The patent goes on to explain the reason for disabling these features and they all boil down to either advertising revenue or forcing users to watch things they don’t want to.
…and they wonder why people are going back to broadcast TV and streaming video over the interwebs…
and illegally downloading too.
pay for hdtv, pay for electricity to run tv, pay for programming to use on spiffy hdtv, be subjected to massive amounts of commercials from programming you are paying for.
What doesnt make sense there?
Kind of like buying a subscription to HBO and every 10 minutes they show you commercials.
It saddens me every day on how greedy this entire world has gotten. Not enough to make a profit, now you have to make more profit every quarter or you are worthless – really, how sad.