Australian invention to put TV ads on ICE

Your set-top box may soon be able to remove advertising for you - for a price.

Australian inventor Peter Vogel (also the creator of the Fairlight Music Synthesizer) today showed off his latest enterprise in Sydney. Dubbed ICE ('Intelligent Content Engine'), the service will be offered in digital TV set top boxes and PVRs from November this year.

The ICE service offers a number of enhanced TV features, including an electronic programme guide, parental control functionality built around programme ratings classifications and a number of different modes designed to skip or eliminate standard television advertising. There is a catch, though - users will have to pay a subscription fee to receive ICE's wireless transmissions which control all of these features. Vogel stated that the fees should range from AU$2-$3, depending on the functionality desired.

Vogel showed off the majority of the ICE service's functionality at an event in Sydney this morning, including the ability to control the volume level of advertisements (dubbed 'ICE Hush') automatically or to skip over to another channel (or, in the example shown, a digital radio station) for the duration of an ad break ('ICE Surf'), or to simply blank the screen out when ads are playing. He also showed the parental control feature of ICE ('ICE Nanny') which works by limiting viewing choices depending on which ratings are shown to be suitable.

While Vogel didn't reveal much of the technical detail behind how the ICE system works, he did state that it was backed up by live monitoring - so presumably he'll be looking to hire people to watch solitary TV stations 24/7 - to enable the system to react automatically to ad changes, or late running TV programmes. The service only works with free-to-air digital television broadcasts and Vogel stated that they have no plans at the current time to extend this to Foxtel's digital TV service.

It's expected that the first ICE-enabled set top boxes will go on the market in November, subject to the company raising the necessary AU$6m in capital required. The company commercialising the technology, Faulconbridge, had already received around AU$1m in funding through the Australian government's BITS initiative.

The service will initially operate in the Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong areas, with plans to move it to a national service within the following 18 months. More detail can be found on the ICE TV website http://www.icetv.info/

Alex Kidman writes for CNET.com.au.