I have a TV Guardian for my television and it doesn't work the way I'd like it to. I got it to work fine and it does what it's supposed to do, but I've found that I don't like what it does. What it's made to do is find profanity by reading the closed captioning and mute the ENTIRE sentence that the word is in. It learns the remote's code with an IR sensor and it is connected to another IR sensor that is placed near the receiver in the TV so it can mute it.
My goal: I would like to make/write something on the Arduino Uno that only mutes the cuss word in the sentence. It doesn't matter to me whether it reads the closed captioning or mutes it some other way (although I don't see how it could work any other way). I want it to be able to find the curse word and mute only the word, not the entire sentence.
I've tried looking up the TV Guardian source code, troubleshooting and having it "learn" the remote's code in different ways, and I've even been looking in these forums for something similar that I could modify and use for what I need. I haven't found anything relating to it yet. I appreciate any help or comments anyone could give me.
I'm also wondering if there's any way to hook the TV Guardian up to a computer and see the code that's written on it and possibly modify it.
I could see this being a hilarious device - it would likely work sporadically, because the rate the words are displayed by CC and what is being said are sometimes so out of synch you are reading words that were said many seconds prior. Sometimes, the CC software (or human) get's behind too far, and just "skips" over everything to "catch up". Or - the words that are shown CC'd aren't spelled in a standard manner (sometimes, they look like the funny text message mistakes).
So - you'd get the thing muting the wrong parts, letting thru the "profanity" (I honestly don't watch TV much any longer, but the profanity that I have heard on what little TV I have watched hardly rises to what I routinely hear at my workplace). It would likely have a surreal effect, humorous and maybe hilarious at times (in that "adolescent male humor" sense - yes, I'm guilty of it!) - maybe even approximating bad dubbing of "kung-fu" movie mayhem.
Please - build this device! It would be worth it for the comedy effect alone!
TV guardian was a good idea, but is just too limited.
I contacted them about adding a compander to it so that the volume would not be so bad.
if you ever listen to radio, the volume is ALWAYS as a set level. they never whisper and they never shout. the volume passes a compactor-expander that 'adjusts' the volume so that you can hear what is being said.
in my view, the TV guardian has much too narrow a target audience.
as was mentioned, one could listen to the words to get the timing right so that the actual word is beeped.
what would be even neater is if you had pre-evaluated a movie, the way they do discography and have a pre-set word to put in place. it would be funny to replace the F word with some words.
also, it would be interesting to have it count the number of occurrences of certain words.
I'd use speech recognition, delay the picture and audio for however long it takes someone to cuss nowadays (it'd need to be digitized and stored in a buffer).
Analyse speech using whatever they use to do that nowadays (some open source library?).
Mute everything but the cuss words for the stream you actually watch.
At least then it's be honest telly.
Or better yet, do as Wawa suggests and not own or watch one
My goal: I would like to make/write something on the Arduino Uno that only mutes the cuss word in the sentence.
Quite simply that goal is impossible.
You are wasting your time trying to do it.
Anyway what words are left un-bleeped on US TV. If You Tube clips are anything to go by they bleep out words that a five year old would use.
Unless it is the offensive word "Republican" but as they control the air waves in the U.S. they don't allow it to be bleeped.
Maybe you could design a "translater" instead of a "beep".
Sometimes you don't exactly know what they mean when they are using those words.
Take the F-word.
not really impossible and im sure some people on here could probably hack a TiVo and set up a 5 second lag then scan for swear words and correct them before its displayed to the tv. Lets face it that's how live tv use to be done years ago except it took human intelligence to understand the word and the context it was used in to deiced if the word was bad or not. I wouldn't start a project like this with a arduino.
Then again I wouldn't start a project like this anyways.
I think using an Arduino for this isn't a good idea.
I think you should hook the tv up to a computer, save the video files with a delay, then write a program that listens for the fucks and deletes them.
That said I don't understand the point as most broadcast TV and cable doesn't contain curse words.. Maybe your watching skinamax and don't want your girl to know? Beep me right in the beep gives it away bro.
The definition of profanity is wide ranging. I know people who thought that the headlines on the National Enquirer was profane and considered the magazine to be pornography, that is not mainstream I would hazard a guess.
Think about the amazing blowback from Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during a past super bowl. I was amazed at the reaction as I did not see much. I guess I could have gone through the recorded broadcast frame by frame so I could get either enraged or excited. I think you would have had to do it frame by frame to see anything part of Janet's anatomy not normally shown on TV, and if you find that offensive I would recommend not doing it frame by frame.
This is proably as non-Arduino a post I will ever make here and it probably has limited value, sorry.
The occasional profanity (and TV's up-tight attitude about it) is the only thing that makes TV worth watching
Did you ever catch Jimmy Kimmel's bit called "pointless censorship" or something similar. They blur and bleep words & video in such a way that it appears folks are cussing & stuff, it is really pretty funny!
The OP has a legitimate question, although it has been answered for the most part the continued discussion has only served to present readers with the infantile condescension of the users partaking.
