Was wondering if TV set top box can be hacked to auto mute it when ads appear. Most set top boxes are CISCO devices. Or maybe an external device that listens the sound, identify ads and send remote IR signal to mute the TV.
An AdBlocker for TV.
BARC India measures TRP with hidden sound embedding. This applies to ads too.
Collect this sound data, make an adblock list (just like uBlock), frequently update it and voila, we just got a TV AdBlocker !
Gonna leave this to y'all hardware folks to make it :)
@subins2000 I would even fund it!
@rajeesh
Dude, you stole my words!
@subins2000
Subin, when you start your own company (not necessarily an IT company for that matter), please let me know. I will invest a small amount.
@subins2000 @primejyothi Let’s talk business (brainstorm, iow).
Subin, how viable would be this anti-ad filter? Presumably the water mark is not publicly available, can it be scraped? How could the list of w/m can be constantly updated?
When it comes to digital ads, dynamic-ad-injection could be prevented but often that leads to loss of many frames in live streams. Can that be improved?
@rajeesh @subins2000 @primejyothi PS, Cisco has given up on set top boxes a while ago. It acquired NDS at a huge price, killed the STB business and laid off many. Also gave up on SOHO segment and Lynksys and other consumer equipments.
@subinpt @subins2000 @primejyothi Most set-top boxes in Indian market are not-well-known Chinese brands and run Linux, isn’t it?
@rajeesh @subins2000 @primejyothi Yes, Coship, Alfa etc. Not sure if they run linux though.
@subinpt @rajeesh @primejyothi hacking into the set top box can bring legal hassle. From what I enquired they have legal clauses to not tamper with the box.
An external device that act as a TV remote would be perfectly legal I think.
Also, since this audio processing is required, a minimum rasp pi would be a requirement. That'd increase the cost.
@subinpt @rajeesh @primejyothi @jishnu Update: I tried out audio fingerprinting. It was easy. I was able to make a script to identify song from microphone. Like Shazam. So, instead of knowing the hidden watermark, the ad sound is enough.
Now I need to buy a rasppi and run it there plus implement the infrared mute option. The next problem is to see how both mute and unmute after ad can be done.
@subins2000 @subinpt @primejyothi @jishnu I have a Raspi lying around. DM your mailing address and you can have it.
@subins2000 @subinpt @primejyothi @jishnu If/when this is usable, I’d first put it use to mute the voice of Manjrekar’s cricket commentary.
@rajeesh Audio fingerprinting and Voice recognition are two different things. For recognizing ads or music, we can use fingerprinting which is relatively easier. But for recognizing a voice, it's more difficult I believe. I'm not sure if a rasppi can handle it, will probably have to use a cloud service. Saw IBM Watson provides one API for it. നോക്കട്ടെ പറ്റുവോന്ന്.
@subins2000 @rajeesh @primejyothi What if the audio signature is played only in the end of the ad or after a certain time from beginning? To mark a mid point or end to make sure that it was fully played and the viewer hasn't changed the channel?