Identifying people rather than boxes

TV-Card is the first attempt (that I know of) to identify individual users to a digital TV service:

Real "pocket-sized televisual hard disks", the TV-Card smart cards make it possible to store the personal data of the viewer on a secured and portable support. They offer moreover the advertisers and editors the possibility to identify and to segment their audience/customers and to target not the household, but each member who composes it.

Some possible models:

Smart card giving access to privileged services: fan-club, soccer team, department stores...

Personalized smart cards: parental smart card (restricts access to X rated programs), specific access (banks, administrations…).

The potential for Personal Video Recorders is obvious, and the use of a smart card ensures compatibility with "the external world (PCs, interactive kiosks, electronic payment terminals, payment systems…)".

I can't comment on the implementation - I'm sure games consoles still do a much better job of this kind of thing - but it's about time someone tried it for digital TV.

(Found via Broadband Bananas)