▲ ▼ Ad blocker for satellite television
Those who don't like irrelevant advertisements on Internet, especially on websites could make use of ad blockers to hide the advertisements.
But no such luck with satellite television, apart from irrelevant, irritating advertisements on television, they often target gullible with misinformation. Not all countries have regulations to prevent misinformation in television ads.
Some smart TVs seem to support ad blockers, which I guess blocks Internet ads; But, not sure how it would be useful as even on smart TVs many watch satellite television.
I would like to have ad blocker for satellite television, which can block advertisements when the shows cut to it and also on-demand ad blocker for advertisements which masquerade as regular content.
This is an interesting concept and in theory not a difficult one to implement, but there's a good reason it hasn't been done. Commercial TV channels cost money to run and very few people are willing to subscribe to them apart from paying a provider for a TV package. Only state funded public service broadcasters are obligated to let people watch them for free and only the biggest ones, such as the BBC are ad free. If you want to watch commercial channels without having to pay to do so then you must endure the ads, that's the deal. If the advertisers stop making money, they'll stop advertising and the channel will cease to exist.
I never block ads on websites I support and in a few cases I pay a subscription fee instead of having to see ads. I don't have any ethical issue with blocking ads on the internet when they are unfairly obtrusive or clearly disreputable, but the ads on commercial television generally aren't as bad as you describe and they don't hamper the viewing of programmes.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment. I understand that this problem might not be ubiquitous.
In India, TV channels are digital and are paid for (non-free channels) via set-top box subscription through out the country. Although regulation of facts in Ads have been mulled, there's no progess. Outright misinformation is being spread via Ads on even reputed news channels.
E.g. Unemployed youths are targeted in a massive Ad campaign for a mobile game featuring leading cricketer, actor, promising large sum of money & asking them to invest their money for profit. This Ad is now featured in every major channels in the country.
I agree that Ads are crucial for survival of several websites with genuine content, as long as the ads are relevant & connected to the content I have no issues and even major ad blockers don't affect them.
It's those irrelevant, privacy breaching Ads which I feel is disrespectful to human intellect.
Unlike Internet, satellite television comes under the strict purview of government in various countries(even if they don't regulate the Ads); I wonder whether an ad blocker for television would be legal. Then again, this would raise the policy discussions of when ad blocker on Internet is allowed; why not allow it for Television & Radio?
That said, I imagine a solution for this need gap would involve hardware capable of training/inference machine learning models intercepting the television feed before delivering the ad blocked content to the television.
I agree that there will be policy discussions, I feel that the broadcast media have long enjoyed the benefits of archaic regulations.
When we're paying individually for TV channels, I don't see an issue in blocking the ads. If there is an issue, then websites on Internet should have the right to request govt. to ban ad blockers like you pointed out.