Totally understand where you're coming from, we the same concern at the beginning. We read through a bunch of TOSs and found that some prohibit the bars from modifying the stream, but they're allowed to change the channel / input whenever they want. We specifically designed our hardware to comply with this by changing the input on the TV instead of modifying the cable stream.

This was my initial thought as well and this is a very clever way of splitting the baby. I hope you don't get sued out of existence.

What prevents the TOS from changing to prohibit any automated attempt to circumvent the display of ads? The providers would have a huge incentive to do this if you become successful.

Somehow TiVo made it all these years on the premise of dodging ads. Not 1:1, but it gives hope.

I'd consider this inevitable, but that just makes it a race to strike a revenue-sharing (and integration) deal with the providers.

Thats a loophole. I’ll bet that’ll get closed if this is successful. I think you’d need to work with tv providers not against them.

It may be a loophole, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be closed. Telling users they can't change the channel or turn off their TV when an ad is playing will never fly.

IANAL but I imagine they could throw in words like “automated” to work around that, assuming anyone reads the TOS and cares to begin with

It depends who has the most power and BATNA. The sports network or the bar owner?

Home viewers are a different thing.

if it's switching the input source, I think that's a more grey area. It's legal for them to change the channel? I'm interested to see what comes of this

Also interested, maybe if this takes off it will push advertisement infrastructure closer to hardware?

It likely isn't in the contract now, but it might be in the future in way form or another.