Verizon has filed a patent for a DVR that can watch and listen to the goings-on in your living room

[The Straight Story]

Verizon has filed a patent for a DVR that can watch and listen to the goings-on in your living room. In the application, the company proposes to use the technology to serve targeted ads appropriate to whatever you’re doing in the, uh, privacy of your own home—fighting, cuddling, or hanging out with your cats.

Verizon is far from the first company to think of this unassailably creepy use for a set-top box. Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 for recommending content based on people it recognizes in the room; Google proposed yet another patent for Google TV that would use audio and video recorders to figure out how many people in a room are watching the current broadcast.

Verizon filed for the application in May 2011, and it was just published last week. (By law, all patent applications are published after 18 months.) In the document, which was first noticed by FierceCable, Verizon gives two examples of the context-sensitive DVR’s use in a couple’s living room: sounds of arguing prompt ads for marriage counseling, while sounds of “cuddling” prompts ads for contraceptives. Charming.

Generally, these uses of cameras and mics frighten the living daylights out of customers (understandably so), so all of these patents have yet to be put to use. Still, the wheels continue to turn in content providers’ heads about how to get eyes and ears in your living room, even as the creepiness factor persists.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/how-to-get-targeted-ads-on-your-tv-a-camera-in-your-set-top-box/

[TwilightGardener]

1. SOUNDS of cuddling?

[enlightenment]

2. Well, that just hit my creep-o-meter

and broke the previous record.
I'm not sure what's worse - this idea (which I had seen reference to in the past, but didn't really believe) or the knowledge that there are folks out there who think this would be perfectly acceptable and make their viewing experience ever-so much better . . .

[Baitball Blogger]

3. If an individual does it, it's criminal.

But if a corporation does it, it stirs the economy.

[importDavid]

4. Good luck with that!

My DVR is in the utility room downstairs with the rest of the AV equipment for the house.

A discrete remote IR eye mounted under the TV in the hearth room sends the signal downstairs.

All the Verizon unit would see is my furnace - if the lights were turned on at the time.

I can see the market for plastic "clip-on" eye patch covers in the future for privacy.

[northoftheborder]

6. Your equipment set up sounds great. i need to get up to date on the latest arrangements for my new

house I'm planning.

[Occulus]

5. "1984" WAS NOT AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL

[SomethingFishy]

7. +1 This is some bizarre shit...

And the funny thing is there will be tons of "I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I care" people who love this idea...

[justabob]

12. yep

The If-you're-not-doing-anything-wrong-it-doesn't-matter crowd makes me crazy.

[lbrtbell]

8. Use a DVD recorder or VCR

Problem solved.

DVR's are energy guzzlers, anyway.

[forestpath]

9. I still use a VCR.

[Demonaut]

10. verizon was one of the first companies to give over personal info on their customers after 911

without requiring a subpoena


Fuck Verizon, I'll never use them

[uncle ray]

11. yet people willingly hand all of the same info over to Google and Facebook etc. everyday.

people get targeted advertising all over the internet. and now with smartphones and tablets becoming the norm, the data gathering is taking place constantly, no matter where you are.

[Enrique]

13. new Verizon mascot