Sick of hearing about certain celebrities every time you turn on the TV? There’s a box for that. Arduino, an open-source electronics prototyping platform, has developed 'Enough Already', a box that connects to your television and mutes blocked celebrities after detecting their names from closed captioning data.
Enough Already works by using Arduino’s Video Experimenter Shield -- an interchangeable add-on module, to send mute commands via infra-red wavelengths whenever blocklisted celebrity names appear.
The list of blacklisted celebrities can be tweaked to your specifications, so if your roommate loves the Kardashians but hates the Beibs, you can make sure that Kim’s booty makes it through, while The Beibs’s song "Baby" is left behind.
The boards can be built by hand or purchased as a unit from Arduino’s website.
Developer Matt Richardson has created a video tutorial that shows interested techies how to build Enough Already using Arduino hardware. As far as hacks go, Enough Already is pretty easy and cheap to construct.
Now, if only there was a way to censor celebrity gossip rags at the supermarket checkout...
Self-Censoring TV
Arduino's Enough Already Blocks Out Annoying Celebrities
Trend Themes
1. Self-censorship Technology - The development of self-censorship technology provides opportunities for brands to create products that filter sensitive or offensive content.
2. Closed Caption Data Utilization - The use of closed caption data to control TV censorship creates opportunities for innovators to develop new technologies that leverage video data.
3. Customizable Blocklist Design - The popularity of customizable blocklists for content such as the Enough Already Arduino box shows an opportunity to create brands that implement user-specific lists for muting content.
Industry Implications
1. Consumer Electronics - Consumer Electronics companies can leverage self-censorship technology trends to create devices that protect users from offensive or sensitive content.
2. Media and Entertainment - The development in the use of closed caption data to operate TV censorship creates an opportunity for the Media and Entertainment industry to manufacture content that allows easy control of censorship.
3. Retail - The need for the censoring of the contents of celebrity gossip in supermarkets presents a disruptive opportunity for retailers to come up with brands that can filter offensive content in check-out aisles.