Comments on: Cable Companies to Log Viewing Habits–Is Privacy at Risk?

By: Fernbleable

Fernbleable — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:52:43 +0000

I usually don’t post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful …

By: j.dean

j.dean — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:06:33 +0000

Does anyone know of a way to allow consumers themselves privately monitor their own tv usage? Simply to allow people to realize how much tv they are actually watching? I am sure cableco's would not want us to figure that out and would be loathe to give us acces to the data that exists inside the box sitting in our homes. It would be basically the same data the wii smartly provides users. What's the big deal?

By: j.dean

j.dean — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:06:33 +0000

By: j.dean

j.dean — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:06:33 +0000

By: ciphone

ciphone — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:20:31 +0000

indeed a mathematician

By: Ryan Radia

Ryan Radia — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:54:57 +0000

Good point. Sorting through the “junk” data from the actual viewing data is going to be a technical hurdle, but it's probably not insurmountable. Perhaps the viewing metrics will place added weight on programs watched within, say, 2 hours of a button push on a DVR.

Although I'd love to leave my TV on “Monster Trucks 24/7″ or whatever if it would mean I'd see nothing but advertisements for gigantic trucks senselessly plowing through stuff.

By: Jarred

Jarred — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:16:49 +0000

I wonder how they factor into their data in the fact that most people leave their cable boxes on when they turn the TV off? Or is that just me? Maybe they give greater priority to those metrics measured after channel changes, with a tapering authority given to those hours upon hours spent on the same channel overnight?

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:52:32 +0000

which just goes to show that I should always use Google to do my math for me instead of Excel

Thanks for correcting my error.

By: rogerthat

rogerthat — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:20:25 +0000

You are indeed a mathematician, sir.

By: Ryan Radia

Ryan Radia — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:02:10 +0000

I'm no mathematician but 500TB/16.9 million = 30 MB per subscriber, right?

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:58:23 +0000

Is it just me or does the size of that Warehouse seem excessive? If you stored equal amounts of data for even twice the number of users (33.6 million) for the next 15 years, 500TB (TB = 10^12) divides out to almost a GB (10^9) of data per customer. Can you possibly need that much space to just store viewing statistics?