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The State of Automated Commercial Skipping
iskqy writes "Even though attention to commerical skipping has gone down since the motion picture studios sued replaytv for it, I've noticed that it appears to be alive and well in some PVR products on the market. ReplayTV PVRs have it (though different from what they got sued for) in what they call Show|Nav (what a terrible feature name!) and SnapStream's Beyond TV has it in a feature they call SmartSkip. In both cases, the user has to press a button to automagically skip a commercial (vs. the original ReplayTV feature which skipped them without any user intervention) but it's basically the same thing. ReplayTV plays down commercial skipping ("jump forward and back between scenes in a show") but SnapStream is more open about the feature ("Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows"). "
MythTV has had this feature for awhile and it can be set to automatically skip commercials so you dont have to press a button to skip them.
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I can tell you how it doesn't work:) This is from a 5080 series replayTV, with the auto-commercial skip.
It doesn't use time. The commercials can be any length. It seems to be about 90% effective (with the latest software update, it used to be worse). So while Im watching a show, it almost always skips ahead at the correct time (when the commercial starts) but 10% of the time it will either start about 10 seconds before the commericals end, or 5-10 seconds into the show (in which case, I curse, then use the goback button (whatever its called) that automatically goes back seven (I think) seconds.
Its a neat feature, and it seems like it sometimes works better on some shows than others. For instance, I always had a problem with it working with X-files more than say, Family guy.
Actually, according to everything I've read, there is no actual increase of sound decibels in commericals. Here is an example I cut and pasted from somewhere..
"Technically, the maximum volume is the same for commercials and normal programming. If you watch the audio levels on a VU meter you will see that they peak at around the same level.
The difference is that advertisers make use of various tricks to make the commercials seem louder. Whereas a TV program will have a range of audio levels, commercials do tend to be full-on noisy. Tricks such as compression are also used to maintain constantly "louder" levels and try to attract attention.
So it's mainly a perceptual thing. Although the commercials don't reach a high volume, the way they are made gives the impression that they are louder."
TiVo doesn't have commercial skip
Sure it does (from the TiVo Community forums):
While playing a recorded show, press Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select. You should hear some kind of beeping confirmation tones at the end. The ->| button will then function as a 30-sec skip instead of it's normal function.
Another feature I didn't know about is you can sort the now playing list:
Sorting the Now Playing List (3.0)
In Now Playing, Enter:
(S)low (0)Zero (R)ecord (T)humbsUp
Press enter to switch sorting options.
short cut keys are
1 for normal
2 for experation date
3 for alphabetical
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.