It seemed difficult, but Roku managed to respond to the demand of many users-consumers who consulted them about it at any time They say they lack a little more publicity in their lives. And the fact is that mere mortals still have a few places that advertising hasn’t managed to infiltrate, but news like this tells us that, thankfully, there are legions of engineers working tirelessly to go where no one has gone before.

So, and as we can read in Lowpass, Roku has patented a system that allows HDMI to be used to identify content served by third-party devices on Roku TVs. The reason is actually very simple and is that the TVs sold by this brand already have their own features for displaying advertising content, such as a screen saver that appears when content is paused from any application installed on the device. . same.

But speaking of TVs, they obviously have HDMI connectors that users can use to connect other external devices, from AndroidTV or Apple TV, and the “problem” (problem for Roku, of course) is that in those circumstances Your smart TV’s operating system doesn’t have all the information you want about the state of said transmissions, more specifically about whether it is active or suspended.

Patent Image: Google Patents

However, with the technology they have patented, the HDMI connection itself allows the TV to detect whether playback of an external device is paused. That? Surely you have already imagined to start showing an advertisement on TV after making sure that it does not interfere with what the user is watching at that moment. Quite a detail, really, that at least this technology aims to be less intrusive.

I could only understand the implementation of a technology like this in a smart TV if its adoption translated into a substantial reduction in the purchase price of the equipment, but even in these cases I’m talking about understanding, not acceptance for myself. The TV being able to detect when I’ve paused a game on my console or a series I’m watching on my Apple TV to automatically start showing me an ad is something I certainly wouldn’t tolerate.