Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> It looks for change of resolution or aspect ratio, change in the size of 
> black bars, and most commercial breaks wind up having a frame or two of 
> digital silence and black on either side, because the commercials are coming 
> from a different server than the programming, so there's a frame or two to 
> regain sync at the transmitter.  At least here this works remarkably well.

  If the broadcasting companies were smart, they would make the commercials
indistuishable from the actual broadcast by using those tricks.

  (I think there's a law here that states that commercial breaks have to
be clearly marked as such, usually by using a clear and very distinguishable
commercial break "logo" or whatever, in other words, it must be completely
clear to the viewer that the commercials are not part of the actual program.
In other words, it would be illegal to sneak commercials in the middle of an
actual program as if they were part of it. However, just because it's clear
to a human viewer when the commercial break starts and ends, that doesn't mean
it has to be clear for a machine. Showing the "commercial break logo" or
whatever is being used could look indistinguishable to a recording machine
from the regular broadcast by avoiding blank frames, complete silence and
such. AFAIK doing *that* is not illegal.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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