21st November 2004, 11:10 PM
Of course you can mute it with either a mute button or by turning down the volume. You can also turn off the TV and wait for the menu to appear. This is about getting around ads by recording them on DVRs or the like. That's what it means... they cannot make it impossible to turn your TV off, that's for sure, and at least the TV as an independant volume control that has no connection to whatever the DVD player is doing.
And as I pointed out, the federal warnings are already usually unskippable on DVDs, and stay on the screen for quite some time. Trailers? Perhaps this would make putting trailers before DVD films more common, but as it is this is extremely uncommon on DVDs...
In those respects this law isn't hugely different. What its main impact would be is that it would be illegal now for DVRs to auto-skip ads. You could still skip them if you want to use a VHS recorder and hit 'record' every time it comes back from ads and 'stop' when it goes to an ad break (and I'm sure that they wish they could ban that too), but one of the main uses of DVRs -- avoiding advertising -- would be illegal.
And as I pointed out, the federal warnings are already usually unskippable on DVDs, and stay on the screen for quite some time. Trailers? Perhaps this would make putting trailers before DVD films more common, but as it is this is extremely uncommon on DVDs...
In those respects this law isn't hugely different. What its main impact would be is that it would be illegal now for DVRs to auto-skip ads. You could still skip them if you want to use a VHS recorder and hit 'record' every time it comes back from ads and 'stop' when it goes to an ad break (and I'm sure that they wish they could ban that too), but one of the main uses of DVRs -- avoiding advertising -- would be illegal.
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