Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ales Dravinec 'Alex']

Gents,

I'll try to explain :

There's a bar with video installed. Rack TV receiver with composite video output feeding LCD screen.
Customer wants a STAND ALONE device (no computer) which shall reproduce 'commercials' to the same screen in such way, that TV program gets interrupted when commercials start and is resumed when those end.
I assume this unit should be some sort of hard disc or 'solid state' player ... but the extra feature ?
In addition to that, time interval for playing commercials has to be set.
Unit can obviously be 'loaded' with AV material using computer (USB ?)

Any Ideas ?

With respect

[Lee Douglas]

What video format are they currently or planning to use?

[Don Boone]

Take a look at the Magicbox line.

http://www.magicboxinc.com/

It has video inputs and can switch between those and they can be in windows or full screen. It also supports 4 different crawls. The software is kinda of like PowerPoint with a scheduler built in. It can control VCRs DVDs or a solid state player they resale.

It's PC based but it runs on some Linux variant. No windows here.
My favorite thing to do during demos is to pull the AC cord and then plug it back in. The display comes back in less than 5 seconds and doesn't miss a beat. Try that with a windows PC.

Don

[Ales Dravinec 'Alex']

Lee Douglas wrote on Sat, 03 October 2009 14:45

What video format are they currently or planning to use?

CV (composite video) all the way : From TV tuner to 'the box' and From 'the box' to display(s). Installation is already been made using CV signals.

Don Boone

... Magicbox line ...

Thanks for the link, Don. Those machines can play, alright, but I still need to 'stop' the TV picture somehow to play the messages.

[Don Boone]

Quote:

Thanks for the link, Don. Those machines can play, alright, but I still need to 'stop' the TV picture somehow to play the messages.

You can't freeze the Cable TV image but you can switch away from it to the media player or other source and make it full screen video.
You can schedule this down to the second.


Don

[Eric Madson]

I found this on a internet search. It looks like it switch inputs to a looping DVD
http://www.commercial-killer.com/

I have never used one but it looks technically like it would work. There is an AD-ID associated with all commercials but I did not think it was broadcast.

[Mike Tomei, CTS]

I can't see how any device is going to differentiate between TV content and randomly placed commercials.  If the commercials occurred at the exact same time every hour, it wouldn’t be a problem.  I would guess that if there was an easy way to detect randomly placed commercial breaks, Tivo and other DVR’s would jump all over that.  I can think of multiple ways that TV broadcasters could send across such commercial break signals, but that would be like shooting themselves in their foot.

To the best of my knowledge, there’s nothing used on TV broadcasts that can be equated to the old Mutual Radio “bee-doop” tones or the CBS Radio chirp.  Years of radio board op-ing (15 years ago) has engrained those sounds in my memory.

-Mike Tomei

[Eric Madson]

It appears the device detects video blanks(Gap between a show and a commercial) and then sends an IR command to your DVD player to start and stop. I know Magnavox use to have a TV model that would cut the audio based on the same concept. It also has software that you can use to "fine tune". They claim 60% sucess rate out of the box and up to 95% when fine tuned. Again, I have never used one and have no idea of its performance.

[Brad Weber]

Mike Tomei, CTS wrote on Thu, 08 October 2009 11:47

To the best of my knowledge, there’s nothing used on TV broadcasts that can be equated to the old Mutual Radio “bee-doop” tones or the CBS Radio chirp.  Years of radio board op-ing (15 years ago) has engrained those sounds in my memory.

The feeds to network affiliates, cable providers, etc. include commercial identifiers for local ad insertion and while digital systems commonly use a SCTE 35 Digital Program Insertion Cueing Message, analog systems did use audible tones.  In the days when having 'satellite' meant having a C or Ku band dish, it was often possible to receive these feeds complete with the audio tones.

[Don Boone]

Quote:

In the days when having 'satellite' meant having a C or Ku band dish, it was often possible to receive these feeds complete with the audio tones.

Those were usually on a second audio sub-carrier. 6.2mhz instead of the standard 6.8mhz if IRC.

Don
Sciencefiction Atlanta tech from the '70s

[Kyle Gaul]

The Pioneer DV8000 DVD player has external inputs to allow simple source switching in a install setup. Automatic commercial insertion is more complicated