This is a bit of a "shower thought" so I appreciate any discussion.

I am rather fed up with seeing ads on services I already pay for. Hulu, Disney, whatever it is. While I could afford to pay for the ad free/premium version, I only see that as "appeasing terrorists" and would only expect to have to keep ponying up more in the future. I know this is already the case with streaming services but stick with me. Most adblock software/plugins work in browsers only, and are less and less effective when the ads are served from the same server as the content. PiHole also doesn't work that well for ads shown via streaming content. At this point I'm so fed up with ads disrupting my shows, screw the advertisers, I'd rather see a blank screen during these minutes than support this business model.

With that preamble, does anyone know if this is a possibility? Can someone build a device, like an HDMI extender that sits between a streaming device (Apple TV/Roku/etc) and the TV, that when an ad is "served" just cuts out the signal and overrides the TV screen and and speakers, making them blank/no noise. Or even better plays some screensaver of your choice, then when your show returns turn it back on. This way the platform and the advertiser believes an ad was served, because it technically was, but I just don't see it. Mainly because f*ck that entire business model. I'm not very technical but all ads have to say "ad" on the screen so I wonder if you can train something to recognize that in the data feed and trigger action off of it. Or perhaps there is another way to do this. Let them advertise to no one, thinking they are advertising to everyone.

I know this is kind of long winded, but I'd love for this to damage the advertisement industry in some way haha. Does anyone know if something like this exists or is theoretically possible?