Technology

59708 readers

2060 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

840

Roku has patented a way to show ads over anything you plug into your TV (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

231 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn't yet been granted.

The technology described would detect whether content was paused in multiple ways—if the video being displayed is static, if there's no audio being played, if a pause symbol is shown anywhere on screen, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause signal has been received from some passthrough remote control. The system would analyze the paused image and use metadata "to identify one or more objects" in the video frame, transmit that identification information to a network, and receive and display a "relevant ad" over top of whatever the paused content is.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Kodi is not suitable for the average user. Some streaming apps like Disney+ require a full chromeOS download just for extracting the DRM part. Roku instead offers for a few bucks a ready-to-go system.

I always wonder why some products just simply have all these DRM features and others don't. Is DRM just a monopol for the chosen ones?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

It's exactly a monopoly for the chosen ones, gate keeping at its worst. Anything that isn't blessed is going to be a bit more effort to get working, but I wouldn't say Kodi is unsuitable for the average user on the grounds of the widevine module though, the DRM module extraction is automated when installing a plugin that requires it.