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Why do some shows have Commercial Skip one time and not the next?

3872 Views 38 Replies 21 Participants Last post by  HerronScott
The subject says it mostly. Why do some shows have a Commercial Skip one time and not the next? My same show will have a SKIP and then next week not have a skip. Some shows in a series from years ago before SKIPs even began, will now have a SKIP. Is there a room of people trying to catch up as the shows are in progress? What the heck? Anyone know how this works?

Thanks for reading
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Lack of consistency in getting it done, by the human skip point markers getting it done.
Channels DVR is able to consistently mark commercials using software. getchannels.com. Not sure why Tivo uses people to do it.
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I have seen shows that get auto autp within 3 minutes of ending. I have also seen many episodes of Futurama and 1 of 15 has auto skip. I too feel there should be a- an automated way to do this and b- much more shows getting the feature.
The subject says it mostly. Why do some shows have a Commercial Skip one time and not the next? My same show will have a SKIP and then next week not have a skip. Some shows in a series from years ago before SKIPs even began, will now have a SKIP. Is there a room of people trying to catch up as the shows are in progress? What the heck? Anyone know how this works?

Thanks for reading
Further what gets my ire up is that a show will show SKIP but it only auto skipsfor part of the show in the first section and then it does not
auto skip in last section. So you have to grab the remote to manually get past the commercials in the latter part of the show. Anyone else noticing this?
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Just this week I had several shows missing skip entirely. On another show it had skip, but it skipped part of the actual show rather than the commercials. This is the last feature that is keeping me with Tivo. Once this goes....
I always find it "humorous" when there is skip for a show but the skip notice doesn't appear/sound at the commercial break. I've learned to try the skip button anyway, for mainstay primetime shows, and then hope for a nice surprise.
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Chicago PD has been missing Skip lately, while the other 2 have it...go figure...:rolleyes::D
I had 2 shows i think Wednesday night not have it, otherwise no problem with it not working on anything.
I had 2 shows i think Wednesday night not have it, otherwise no problem with it not working on anything.
Chicago Night is on Wednesdays...:D
Chicago Night is on Wednesdays...:D
I don't watch any of those,the two i had this week with skip MIA were Stumptown and S.W.A.T.
The other potential issue is that TiVo uses the closed caption data track to synchronize their skip data to your airing, since network affiliates are not infrequently up to a minute or two off from the national feed. But if there was some signal breakup that scrambled the closed caption info then TiVo seems unable to synchronize and instead just omits commercial skip.

IIRC the court cases that let TiVo and others commercial skip depended on them never skipping any of the show (skipping parts of the show was said to be making a derivative work and hence a copyright infringement). So TiVo has been very conservative in their approach; requiring human review of skip points and also time synchronization to the program in order to be very sure the only skip commercials and not even a second of actual show content. Unfortunately those extra steps sometimes lead to skip being unavailable because it seems TiVo would rather have no skip than ever have an incorrect skip.
Mine has worked on comedy central since I got it but this week all shows were missing skip. What's the problem?
Mine has worked on comedy central since I got it but this week all shows were missing skip. What's the problem?
One of the people watching shows and adding skips is on vacation?
Working fine for me. I report failures here: Skip not available on shows recorded tonight
Further what gets my ire up is that a show will show SKIP but it only auto skipsfor part of the show in the first section and then it does not
auto skip in last section. So you have to grab the remote to manually get past the commercials in the latter part of the show. Anyone else noticing this?
Never had that happen.
Further what gets my ire up is that a show will show SKIP but it only auto skipsfor part of the show in the first section and then it does not
auto skip in last section. So you have to grab the remote to manually get past the commercials in the latter part of the show. Anyone else noticing this?
With regular SkipMode, I sometimes (not infrequently) find that while a show generally has skips marked, the last commercial break doesn't.
Interesting... I think in early television there were several 'changing bands/lines' of information constantly found at the very top of the picture. Most times viewers didn't see them because the picture height was adjusted where the bands would be out of view. As capacitors and parts aged often bars could be seen at the top and bottom... The lines could be seen just below the upper black bar.

I think those bars were used by networks to 'alert remote studios' about pending commercial times? And I think the remote studios had the gear to monitor and decode same? Mostly because most commercials had 'local content'... other commercials were 'national' and needed no intervention. A real TV repair person should know...

Things have changed so much with digital TV that I doubt if the above method is still in use? (Seems like sub-carrier data would be dang handy for this job). I usta enjoy lurking around FM station sub-carrier channels... sadly most stations dropped them. MUZAK used sup-carrier broadcasting... PRN and others did too, but I digress.

Yikes ~ with so many programs constantly broadcasting do you think TiVo could afford to employ a small army to 'mark' all of them?

SOGLAD
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With regular SkipMode, I sometimes (not infrequently) find that while a show generally has skips marked, the last commercial break doesn't.
Lately I'm missing SM on lots of shows. AND SM skips 2 breaks ahead. The SM break is there but missed for some reason.
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