System helps U.S. military watch TV from 9 hours ago
Personnel watching the the live American cable TV service at Yokota Air Base were very annoyed to find nothing but informercials during Japanese prime time, so the base is installing a special system that delays broadcasts:
The sophisticated hardware and software brought in for the “time-shifting” acts as a computerized container, holding a show for nine hours before it’s rebroadcast. One is required for each channel.
“The time-shift servers work much like a very large TiVo,” Keith Southard, chief executive officer of Allied Telesis Capital Corp. in San Jose, Calif., wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. “They take content in, store it on large hard drives, and then replay the content at the designated time — nine hours later in a continuous stream.”
I wonder if they’ll also get the option to fast forward through commercials?
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