The US requires that certain swear words be replaced with "bleep" sounds in a TV broadcast. While I do not appreciate too many swear words, I find the mechanical noise a lot more distracting.
Instead, I propose the following mechanism:
Transmit the "beep" with some sort of out-of-band encoding of the original audio, allowing the receiving device to place in the proper audio at the time segment. This would keep old equipment backwardly compatible for those 'sensitive ears' and allow me to go into a setting on my TV and remove all censoring from the broadcast.
A potential mechanism would be to slightly modulate the transmitted picture (see link) before the censored sound to contain the necessary information to re-constitute the redacted audio segment. The "beep" should be easy enough to detect by the receiving device.-- cowtamer, Feb 21 2011 JPEG Steganography http://portal.acm.o...tion.cfm?id=1142833an example of hiding data in images without visual impact [cowtamer, Feb 21 2011] Jimmy Kimmel: This Week in Unnecessary Censorship http://www.milkandc...link/242345/detail/Slightly O/T Unnecessary Censorship: Putting the beeps in where they might not need to be [Dub, Feb 24 2011] Might be easier to put the censoring on the tube as a family-setting, rather than put it on a separate audio track.-- FlyingToaster, Feb 21 2011 Watching an action movie on TBS (Turner Broadcasting Station) is a hilarious experience. "You asshole! I can't believe you're fucking with me!" is replaced with "You airhead, I can't believe you're funning with me." Whatever that means.
I don't believe I've ever been "funned" with but it doesn't sound good.-- threelefts, Feb 22 2011 A local solution would be the following: An expert computer system (Watson?) would do its best to fill in the missing swear word with a voice sample for the most-probably-correct word.-- sqeaketh the wheel, Feb 22 2011 Nice. (phew - that was a freaky moment.)-- VJW, Feb 22 2011 Yeah I think it makes much more sense to broadcast the uncensored version and have an out-of-band trigger that causes the TV itself to insert a bleep, should the viewer want this. Kind of like how the Internet is uncensored and prudes have to install nannyware to filter it. It would be technically much easier too.
But until that happens, I do quite like the idea of having a device sitting in-line between my TV and speakers which sits waiting for a bleep sound and inserts a profanity selected at random.-- idris83, Feb 22 2011 Combining this idea with the Dark Gerbel idea could work quite well...-- xandram, Feb 22 2011 The sane way to do it would, of course, be what idris83 said (transmit the original audio and an out of band signal to beep), but that breaks backwards compatibility with existing TVs. If the original audio can be transmitted out of band, then existing devices will continue to produce the annoying beeps, as the powers that be apparently desire.
(the inspiration behind the idea was trying to watch something on the Comedy channel and not having ANY idea what was being said)-- cowtamer, Feb 22 2011 Bonus bun for [sqeaketh]. The random aspect would make watching The Big Lebowski even funnier, if possible.
(BTW: The current TV broadcast contains the phrase "This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps!" in place of the original sodomy reference)-- shapu, Feb 23 2011 I think it is a f*ing good idea!-- create, Feb 26 2011 There's three *s in f***king-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2011 Depends on what f***king you're talking about. I could probably have put six or seven *s in ther when I was younger, but now I'm lucky to lay out two of 'em.-- shapu, Feb 28 2011 random, halfbakery