TV boxes are not designed for customer needs any longer, advertisers come first. Hence the push towards streaming where it'll become impossible to fast forward through adverts. The 360 is another step on down this road.
I do feel sorry for future generations. I believe advertisers are desperately trying to establish a mechanism which will check our eyeballs and make sure we are looking at adverts before allowing us to continue.
The 'ads' can also be useful for customers such as advising them of the introduction of new channels such as That's TV 2 and That's TV 3, or that the kids TV channels will be available to all users at no additional cost such as the free period during the October half term, or the addition of new FAST channels, or new free apps such as Rakuten TV, or live Olympic or tennis channels in UHD.
Totally agree with you. Information about changes to the EPG are useful of course.
But in my opinion, that's not an advertisement, that's just courtesy information. I believe an "advertisement" is a commercial designed to get people to purchase a product sold elsewhere. Such as the fitness advert I recieved.
Mixing important service messages into the same mechanism as commercial advertisement space is bad UI practice, in my opinion of course, which obvously doesn't matter going forward as such practice likely generates more ad revenue as Mr_K quite rightly understands.
If we dont stop now, I believe future set top boxes will begin showing still adverts as soon as you press pause. I would love to be proven wrong. I guess I can only wait and see how bad it gets. 😛
