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Do You Utilize Commercial Skipping Software?
Jul
25
2011
Yes
33% (152 votes)
No - No interest
2% (9 votes)
No - It's too hard to setup
18% (81 votes)
No - I love commercials
1% (3 votes)
No - My content is CopyOnce
4% (18 votes)
No - It requires too much horsepower from my HTPC
3% (15 votes)
No - What’s the big deal when I can just skip manually
19% (88 votes)
No - I set it up, but it's not accurate enough
11% (51 votes)
No -Other
9% (40 votes)
Total votes: 457
Comments
I find it interesting that so many people don't think it's much of a deal. The deal is that while you can easily fast forward past a commercial in about 30 seconds or so, you can skip automatically right to the next program segment in less than 1 second. I use ShowAnalyzer and it's generally quite accurate about 85-90% of the time. Occasionally it maps the end of a commercial break erroneously, but that still leaves me the option to fast forward to the right spot. I don't let it skip automatically for that very reason.
I have no doubt that I could increase the accuracy if I fiddled with the settings, but right out of the box it does a pretty good job so I just leave it alone. Setup is pretty straightforward and there are guides to take you through each of the required software installations and settings, of which there aren't all that many.
My guess is that those who don't think it's a big deal have never tried using it.
For me it's more that my kids never see commercials; every time we travel I am reminded of why that is valuable and how much linear TV sucks.
It doesn't take 30 seconds to skip a commercial manually. It takes 2 seconds. I've set my remote to skip 150 seconds on a >>I command and and then 10 seconds on a >> command. I'm through the commercial in 2 seconds. When I setup automatic commercial skipping, I found that I actually missed watching the commercials once in awhile. There are often commercials that I want to watch, and with my method I can find them and watch them easily.
I might use it if I didn't have the skip feature and could only do a fast forward that took 30 seconds, but automatic commercial skipping is inaccurate, wastes CPU cycles, and keeps me in the dark about products, shows, and movies that I might be in the market to consume.
Yes, but then you have to do it. When it's automated, the PC does it for you - isn't that the point of a PC (i.e. automating mundane tasks)? More importantly I don't want my kids marketed to. They don't need to eat fast food or buy lots of crap toys. Keeping that drivel out of their purview isn't a waste of CPU cycles, it's something that I'm glad to pay for.
We are surrounded by marketing most of which is unpleasant; why not exercise control over your exposure?
It doesn't take 30 seconds to skip a commercial manually. It takes 2 seconds. I've set my remote to skip 150 seconds on a >>I command and and then 10 seconds on a >> command. I'm through the commercial in 2 seconds. When I setup automatic commercial skipping, I found that I actually missed watching the commercials once in awhile. There are often commercials that I want to watch, and with my method I can find them and watch them easily.
I might use it if I didn't have the skip feature and could only do a fast forward that took 30 seconds, but automatic commercial skipping is inaccurate, wastes CPU cycles, and keeps me in the dark about products, shows, and movies that I might be in the market to consume.
It does with standard fast forward, assuming you want to get to the end of the break with any level of accuracy. You can still skip the commercials manually, as I already stated. There are some commercials I'd like to see, which is why I go the manual route instead of letting the PC do it automatically, but they tend to be few and far between.
Who cares if commercial skipping wastes CPU cycles? My PC runs ShowAnalyzer in the background and it never impacts anything I'm doing with it so I don't see what the problem is. ShowAnalyzer is the most accurate commercial skipping app I've seen to date and it can be fine tuned to work even better if you invest a little time to get it right.
Whatever your reason, I'm sure Madison Avenue loves you for it. Personally, I use a DVR to avoid the crap they keep trying to shove down my throat (both literally and figuratively).
Voted no for now. I never bothered with my TiVo recordings I copied to my PC, and I don't know if I will take the time to set it up for Media Center. I tend to use TiVo's 30 second slip during commercials, so it will depend on how responsive I find Media Center before I make my decision.
If any of you listen to this weeks podcast, I felt like I had a challenge from Andrew to setup Commercial skipping because why not, but just to have commerical skipping..
Anyway, I was able to get it going in about 30 mins, or the last part of the podcast if you noticed I wasn't talking...
My wife used it today and said it was great..so thank you Andrew..
I might have to check this out. Since I have installed a Ceton tuner I am recording 30 to 60 gig a day. And my family is terrible about hitting delete after they finish a show.
I tried Comskip a couple years back and found it insufficiently accurate. However I have been thinking about trying it again. Ceton tuner goes in next week, so after that I'll have to give it a go again.
Kind of is my answer...
All my recordings go through Comskip which works pretty well at times but you really need to set it up per channel and as soon as a broadcaster changes anything you are back to square one.
When it works it is brilliant but in the UK almost almost ad breaks seem to be 4 minutes. With Mediaportal I can skip 4 minutes in a couple of presses on the remote and this seems to enough to skip ads quickly and easily
I have used ShowAnalyzer. It works OK with the DTB plugin. Only real issue I have is commerical processing hanging up periodically. May reinstall and see what I get.