Your Remote and You

Lots of buzz and fuss on the net generated from this article by Barry Fox on Philips’ patent application to disable the TV remote control via flags in the broadcast stream. Good ol’ Bazza. If you’ve got a DVD player you’ve probably already experienced this. Try fast-forwarding through the copyright notice that plays when the DVD is inserted. On lots of discs you can’t. This is part of the DVD spec. - the disc tells the player to ignore the FFwd command. Of course, the player can ignore the request - just as some players ignore the region code on the disc. Now, if you had to choose between a TV that disabled the remote and one that didn’t (or made it optional)...oh right the market will decide.