How do you square the circle...

YouTube adverts work quite well. Most of them are really short (5 seconds long?) and for the longer ones you usually get a choice to skip them after a few seconds too.

Short, sharp adverts are good. The adverts that ramble on for a minute and then it turns out to be for some completely irrelevant product are not :p.

Tony Edwards said:
Sky+ box! and skip through the adverts. Damn no I pay for Sky. I hate these moral conundrums.
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I use a USB freeview TV tuner. I can record episodes/series etc to my server with NextPVR and play them on my TV via Kodi. I can skip all the ads I like and the total is ~£20 for each tuner. I use these tuners (I don't use their aerial, or their software) - you can pick them up elsewhere for cheaper.

I never set it up but you can also use software like comskip to automatically detect adverts in video files and instruct your video player to skip them. Smart :).
 
Pho said:
I use a USB freeview TV tuner. I can record episodes/series etc to my server with NextPVR and play them on my TV via Kodi. I can skip all the ads I like and the total is ~£20 for each tuner. I use these tuners (I don't use their aerial, or their software) - you can pick them up elsewhere for cheaper.
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Is the recorded quality on these quite good? I've recently purchased plex pass and that has the ability of playing back recorded content. Would be ideal to record some of the programs that don't get added to on-demand services.
 
Semple said:
Is the recorded quality on these quite good? I've recently purchased plex pass and that has the ability of playing back recorded content. Would be ideal to record some of the programs that don't get added to on-demand services.
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Recording HD channels is good enough, SD is terrible but that is the same on any freeview recorder.

Plex has recently changed its EPG provider though and is now pretty bad as a DVR, wasn't great to start with but they've managed to mess it up even more so I wouldn't recommend paying for it for DVR purposes alone.

malachi said:
And they have whitelist some sites which are plagued with ads.
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Yeah thats a bit off really, how the service that blocks ads now allows advertisers to pay them to be whitelisted. Seems they now have the keys to the castle and companies will pay a lot to be let in.
 
Diddums said:
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^ This mostly, glad you said it not me :p

 
Pho said:
YouTube adverts work quite well. Most of them are really short (5 seconds long?) and for the longer ones you usually get a choice to skip them after a few seconds too.
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There are loads of chrome plug-ins that get rid of YouTube ads altogether and you'd never know they existed. Also uBlock origin for usual website ads and of course the aforementioned downloading of TV i barely seen an ad for years and years
 
NoobCannon said:
Not sure how they can justify having adverts on a premium service
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Yep that's like a kick in the teeth.

I don't mind so much when a service is promoting their own content, like how Netflix/Prime have a quick "advert" about a new show or new season of a returning show. These are skippable, and are only trying to point out other content that you might be interested in.
 
Tony Edwards said:
Sky+ box! and skip through the adverts. Damn no I pay for Sky. I hate these moral conundrums.
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You're lucky Sky didn't implement the no fast forwarding through commercials policy they were talking about a few years ago.

I'd like to know how many people are inspired by an advert to buy something?
 
BowdonUK said:
I'd like to know how many people are inspired by an advert to buy something?
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It is an interesting conundrum.

With the billions/trillions that companies spend on advertising worldwide, you would assume their marketing departments have a rough idea of potential ROI.

Coca Cola has spent $4 billion dollars in 2018! I'm sure people who buy coca cola products would continue to purchase those throughout 2019 if Coca Cola decided not to spend a penny on advertising for a year.

People's purchasing powers aren't always dictated by adverts, people will always buy products they're more familiar with, products that are well stocked, products that they like, products that have always been around. Coca Cola pretty much ticks all those boxes.
 
Semple said:
It is an interesting conundrum.

With the billions/trillions that companies spend on advertising worldwide, you would assume their marketing departments have a rough idea of potential ROI.

Coca Cola has spent $4 billion dollars in 2018! I'm sure people who buy coca cola products would continue to purchase those throughout 2019 if Coca Cola decided not to spend a penny on advertising for a year.

People's purchasing powers aren't always dictated by adverts, people will always buy products they're more familiar with, products that are well stocked, products that they like, products that have always been around. Coca Cola pretty much ticks all those boxes.
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It’s all about programming and to program humans you have to hit them with catchy jingles/phrases and or repitition, take the meerkat “simples” as a well known example.

Also it’s about continuing to program the next generation most people are not even aware that they are being programmed on a daily basis, at least that is what they rely on. Implant a thought or felling that the host takes as his own.

Who here has heard of a man called Edward Bernays yet his influence stretches the world over.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lOUcXK_7d_c

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
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BowdonUK said:
You're lucky Sky didn't implement the no fast forwarding through commercials policy they were talking about a few years ago.

I'd like to know how many people are inspired by an advert to buy something?
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Must be a lot of people who do or they wouldn't spend so much money. Saying that companies get locked in spending wars with their rivals so if one does something the rest respond, I guess the real winners are the ad companies.

My tolerance for adverts has dropped considerably over the years now as technology has improved to allow us to skip / avoid them, think its the same for most as our attention spans get ever shorter so even if we can't skip them we just do something else like stare at our phone for a few minutes.

They've got us now with on demand services though as you can't fast forward through those which is a real killer, so much so that I've probably used 4od a handful of times and just given up trying to watch something on sky on demand as you have to sit through so many of the damn things.

I saw on the news the other day that the UK may be extending its allowed average ad break length following changes in the EU which sucks as channels tend to cut more bits out of shows so they still fit in the 30 / 60 min brackets.
 
the problem with adblockers is of the advertisers own making, if they hadn't made their adverts so annoying, intrusive and pervasive and stuck to reasonable amounts all but the most die hard of people wouldn't bother blocking them.

for a while i figured the youtube model was a good one, short and sweet ads or you can skip them, one at the start or end of a video, it's decent and you get to watch the content you want to see unmolested. however even they're moving towards making them more intrusive, which just highlights the trend that caused this all in the first place.

i suppose it's still not as bad as conventional media, last time i actually watched a regular tv show it was ridiculous how much of the show was ad time.
 
robgmun said:
There are loads of chrome plug-ins that get rid of YouTube ads altogether and you'd never know they existed. Also uBlock origin for usual website ads and of course the aforementioned downloading of TV i barely seen an ad for years and years
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I use uBlock on my desktop, it's only on my phone I see them. I had AdAway set-up for a while but turned it off for some reason. I don't mind ads if they're not really annoying though.

I remember the first time I saw a YouTube advert having used adblockers for years I never knew they existed. Pikachu face moment :p.
 
Semple said:
Is the recorded quality on these quite good? I've recently purchased plex pass and that has the ability of playing back recorded content. Would be ideal to record some of the programs that don't get added to on-demand services.
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It's 1080i, it'll be no different to your set-top box. Well, your set-top box might apply some extra filters over the top to sharpen the image up or something but you can do that yourself with ffdshow or various video players I guess.

If you let me know your email I'll send you a sample clip if you like?
 
Marvt74 said:
Problem i've found now is that website know you're using an Ad-Blocker and don't give you access until you disable the ad-blocker!
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You can usually get around these (as in, stop seeing them in the first place) by running Nano Defender alongside Nano Adblocker, or alternatively alongside uBlock Origin with the relevant list and settings (see their page for details).
 
I don't think many of us have too many issues with standard banner adds, its where the page becomes 60% advertisement with intrusive audio / video or those annoying adverts that decided to randomly grow in size that most of us have issues.
 
Marvt74 said:
Problem i've found now is that website know you're using an Ad-Blocker and don't give you access until you disable the ad-blocker!
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Rainmaker said:
You can usually get around these (as in, stop seeing them in the first place) by running Nano Defender alongside Nano Adblocker, or alternatively alongside uBlock Origin with the relevant list and settings (see their page for details).
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If you're using a Chromium-based web browser, I would also recommend the very helpful uBlock Origin Extra, which is an ad-blocker-blocker-blocker. :D See https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra#purpose, https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra/wiki/Sites-on-which-uBO-Extra-is-useful, and for further explanation as to why it's needed by the author himself: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/83quub/ublock_origin_extra_for_firefox/dvkou8d.
 
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