Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!ogccse!blake!milton!uw-beaver!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!mbutts
From: mbutts@mentor.com (Mike Butts)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: detecting TV commercials, is it possible?
Message-ID: <1989Sep20.024943.2014@mentor.com>
Date: 20 Sep 89 02:49:43 GMT
References: <980@pedsga.UUCP>
Organization: engr
Lines: 27

From article <980@pedsga.UUCP>, by jeffj@pedsga.UUCP (Jeff Jonas):
> 
> I read somewhere, sometime that there is some barcode in the
> commercials so that sponsers can have 'black boxes' watching
> the t.v. all day and verify that the commercials were actually broadcast.
> 
> I would further guess that the codes are at both the beginning and end
> of the commercial in order to catch those times whan a commercial
> is started but not played to the end.
> After all, if you payed for air time, you'd want verification that
> you got what you paid for!

I haven't looked lately, but when I used to watch TV on a Commodore computer
monitor that was set up without the overscan normal TVs have, I could see these
little bar codes appear in the corner for a second or so at the start and end
of *some* commercials (not all :-( ).  I have read that these are used by
fulfillment agencies' automatic verification machines for the purpose of
confirming that the commercials paid for actually appeared.

I have wondered since if anyone has rigged up such a gizmo for the home.  A big
problem is that the codes only appear on some national commercials, and I never
saw them on the locals.
-- 
Michael Butts, Research Engineer       KC7IT           503-626-1302
Mentor Graphics Corp., 8500 SW Creekside Place, Beaverton, OR 97005
!{sequent,tessi,apollo}!mntgfx!mbutts         mbutts@pdx.MENTOR.COM
Opinions are my own, not necessarily those of Mentor Graphics Corp.