Does Apple Plan On Killing The Commercial?

Apple has been granted a patent that suggests they will soon enter our living rooms in a big way. U.S. Patent No. 8,249,497 for "Seamless switching between radio and local media," could be used by mobile devices to turn off or skip unwanted video or audio broadcast segments such as commercials, according to AppleInsider. According to the report:

With the new patent, a device will allow a user listening to content from a radio station or "non-radio media or content sources" to skip past the sections they aren't interested in, filling the gap with on-board media instead. Also of interest is that commercials are among the types of content which can be replaced by stored media.

So where could Apple use this technology? On their rumored set-top box and/or iTV, of course. As interesting as this patent sounds, Apple could find it difficult to actually implement it. After all, as much as we may dislike commercials, they do pay for much of the programming we like to watch. We'll keep you updated. Source: AppleInsider

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