Muting won't work. Any code/hardwiring combination that freezes your channel-changing during advertisements will no doubt freeze all of the controls -- even power, otherwise what's the point.

Will there be a "go-around?" Almost certainly. Many of us who are reasonably comfortable with technology are unlikely to use such however, as we are morally queasy about supporting piracy and the like. I never used napster either -- and that wasn't exactly user-UNfriendly.

I wonder when ads will invade elsewhere?

Could you conceive of CA selling ad space to defray costs? Imagine your battlefield unit beating those peasants and then, when we would normally see "celebrating" in the description, the unit cheers and its banner changes into a larger one reading "DRINK RC COLA" or some such.

I wonder how the EB folks would handle that.....


** no offense intended to the RC folks.