# How does skip mode work?



## wscottcross

I understand WHAT is does, what I'm looking for is the mechanics of HOW it does it. Do they push a skip file to the Bolt? Is it some metadata that gets added to the recording? Is it possible to use that data for commercial skipping in some third party app such as VideoReDo?


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## ej42137

TL;DR: Don't think so.

My imagining as to how it works is the following:


TiVo has a office in North Carolina where people in cubicles determine the beginning and end points of commercial interruptions, possibly computer-aided but basically doing what is a manual process.
The metadata describing commercials is probably pulled down when guide data is pulled. It can't be when the program is recorded because at that point the metadata doesn't yet exist.
I presume the data is pulled because the data required for commercial breaks is very tiny, much less than the amount of data that is pulled to display a program's other information; and it isn't available when the program is recorded. I see the alternative of pushing all SkipMode information as possible but less likely seeing as how willing TiVo is to let us see the spinning blue circle when we ask to see the guide or an individual program's information.
The commercial metadata is embedded in TiVo's proprietary TiVo interface protocols. I imagine the information is well protected, as it is valuable proprietary information. Even if I'm wrong is some of my other guesses I can't imagine TiVo giving it away.
For the same reason I doubt TiVo will make the metadata available through the RPC interface used by kmttg and TiVoDesktop.
And I'd love to find that my analysis is completely wrong.


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## Dan203

wscottcross said:


> Is it possible to use that data for commercial skipping in some third party app such as VideoReDo?


I'm looking into it it.


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## wscottcross

ej42137 said:


> TL;DR: Don't think so.
> 
> My imagining as to how it works is the following:
> 
> 
> TiVo has a office in North Carolina where people in cubicles determine the beginning and end points of commercial interruptions, possibly computer-aided but basically doing what is a manual process. Understood
> The metadata describing commercials is probably pulled down when guide data is pulled. It can't be when the program is recorded because at that point the metadata doesn't yet exist.The skip data is available withing minutes of most recordings ending. I don't know the guide data refresh rate, but I didn't think it was multiple times per hour.
> I presume the data is pulled because the data required for commercial breaks is very tiny, much less than the amount of data that is pulled to display a program's other information; and it isn't available when the program is recorded. I see the alternative of pushing all SkipMode information as possible but less likely seeing as how willing TiVo is to let us see the spinning blue circle when we ask to see the guide or an individual program's information.I also assumed that the skip data was pulled rather pushed. Maybe it could happen twice an hour on a push basis to cover the half hour and hour long shows. I guess the mechanics of how it get to our machines is less important than where it gets stored locally and whether we can use it.
> The commercial metadata is embedded in TiVo's proprietary TiVo interface protocols. I imagine the information is well protected, as it is valuable proprietary information. Even if I'm wrong is some of my other guesses I can't imagine TiVo giving it away.Never know if you dont try.
> For the same reason I doubt TiVo will make the metadata available through the RPC interface used by kmttg and TiVoDesktop.Hopefull
> And I'd love to find that my analysis is completely wrong.


 I hope so too.


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## ej42137

Apparently Roamios (and I assume Premieres and Bolts) have two kinds of guide data pulls. There is one big one about once a day that gets guide data for the scheduling of Season One Pass recordings. And there is also a dynamic pull of a much smaller amount that happens when you display guide data and the data for an individual episode. This I conclude because of the blue spinning circles we see when the Internet and/or TiVo's server is slow, and more significantly, because at times recording scheduling data is out of sync with data displayed by the guide. For example, at one point recordings will be scheduled as if an episode had only generic data when the guide shows specific data, and later the scheduling data appears to catch up and the recording will be scheduled with specific data. People have brought this up in TCF forums, and I have seen it myself on my own machines. I presume SkipMode data would be part of this dynamic pull from TiVo's servers.

Obviously I'm just hypothesizing about all this, of course.

By the way, using dan203's wonderful VideoReDo it takes me only minutes to identify and cut commercial breaks from recordings. I imagine someone who did this for a living could be much quicker than I.


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## zerdian1

There are many automated tools in the video feeds that the stations use and networks use to insert commercials.

I have been using extra boxes since the late 1970's that paused my old VCR to mark commercials.

Then there was Replay TV which was pretty good at making commercials to skip.

in the last 10 years there is the Dish Hopper which skipped on only 4 network stations and only during primetime.

And now we have the Bolt.

There is no way I can believe that any group of humans is manually adding the TiVo Tick marks in real time to mark commercials.
I am sure TiVo is using the same breaks that all the stations use.
It is all automatic for local stations and for the networks.
the marks may not be consistent across networks.

I fully believe the tit is automated for TiVo Bolt.



ej42137 said:


> TL;DR: Don't think so.
> 
> My imagining as to how it works is the following:
> 
> 
> TiVo has a office in North Carolina where people in cubicles determine the beginning and end points of commercial interruptions, possibly computer-aided but basically doing what is a manual process.
> The metadata describing commercials is probably pulled down when guide data is pulled. It can't be when the program is recorded because at that point the metadata doesn't yet exist.
> I presume the data is pulled because the data required for commercial breaks is very tiny, much less than the amount of data that is pulled to display a program's other information; and it isn't available when the program is recorded. I see the alternative of pushing all SkipMode information as possible but less likely seeing as how willing TiVo is to let us see the spinning blue circle when we ask to see the guide or an individual program's information.
> The commercial metadata is embedded in TiVo's proprietary TiVo interface protocols. I imagine the information is well protected, as it is valuable proprietary information. Even if I'm wrong is some of my other guesses I can't imagine TiVo giving it away.
> For the same reason I doubt TiVo will make the metadata available through the RPC interface used by kmttg and TiVoDesktop.
> And I'd love to find that my analysis is completely wrong.


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## astrohip

zerdian1 said:


> There is no way I can believe that any group of humans is manually adding the TiVo Tick marks in real time to mark commercials.


I thought I read where TiVo said they are using people to do it.


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## bareyb

astrohip said:


> I thought I read where TiVo said they are using people to do it.


I can't imagine that would or could possibly be true. There are thousands of shows on dozens of networks all with a multiple commercials. There has to be commercial markers of some kind already in the show that they are simply picking up on. I know the old Proscan VCR's that had commercial skip used a similar technology.


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## zerdian1

Back in the 70's and 80's:
The studios used to mark inserts
they were black screen
followed by a screen with 3 marks in the corner.
then the networks use to mark places for local commercials to be inserted.
the commercials would be inserted following a single black screen followed by a black screen with three white marks in the corner.
the commercials would be inserted.
followed by a single black screen.
one screen is too little for the viewer to catch.
but the automated systems for commercials it was enough.
I have been to studios for radio and TV and it is all automated.

the only thing I could imagine a room full of people doing is to try and see if the automated systems marked real commercials and not keyed in on a black screen that was part of the movie.
There are about 20 stations that TiVo has the SkipMode working for so far:

CBS, 
NBC, 
ABC, 
Fox, 
CW, 
Comedy Central, 
Discovery, 
AMC, 
Sci-Fi, 
USA, 
FX, 
HGTV, 
Lifetime, 
Bravo, 
History channel, 
TNT, 
Food Network, 
TLC, 
ABCFam


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## bareyb

zerdian1 said:


> Back in the 70's and 80's:
> The studios used to mark inserts
> they were black screen
> followed by a screen with 3 marks in the corner.
> then the networks use to mark places for local commercials to be inserted.
> the commercials would be inserted following a single black screen followed by a black screen with three white marks in the corner.
> the commercials would be inserted.
> followed by a single black screen.
> one screen is too little for the viewer to catch.
> but the automated systems for commercials it was enough.
> I have been to studios for radio and TV and it is all automated.
> 
> the only thing I could imagine a room full of people doing is to try and see if the automated systems marked real commercials and not keyed in on a black screen that was part of the movie.
> *there are about 20 stations that tiVo has the SkipMode working for so far.*


Really? That's encouraging. Do you happen to know which ones?


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## zerdian1

bareyb said:


> Really? That's encouraging. Do you happen to know which ones?


I posted it after your question

the SkipMode channel list from TiVo Bolt:

CBS, 
NBC, 
ABC, 
Fox, 
CW, 
Comedy Central, 
Discovery, 
AMC, 
Sci-Fi, 
USA, 
FX, 
HGTV, 
Lifetime, 
Bravo, 
History channel, 
TNT, 
Food Network, 
TLC, 
ABCFam


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## bareyb

Cool. That's a more complete list than I expected. I thought there would be much foot dragging about something like this. 

I know for years they were telling us they wouldn't do commercial skip because it would piss off the content providers. Even 30 second skip is still a backdoor code. I wonder why all of a sudden it's okay with TiVo to openly skip commercials? Not that I'm complaining, but it is curious.


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## ej42137

zerdian1 said:


> There are many automated tools in the video feeds that the stations use and networks use to insert commercials.
> 
> I have been using extra boxes since the late 1970's that paused my old VCR to mark commercials.
> 
> Then there was Replay TV which was pretty good at making commercials to skip.
> 
> in the last 10 years there is the Dish Hopper which skipped on only 4 network stations and only during primetime.
> 
> And now we have the Bolt.
> 
> There is no way I can believe that any group of humans is manually adding the TiVo Tick marks in real time to mark commercials.
> I am sure TiVo is using the same breaks that all the stations use.
> It is all automatic for local stations and for the networks.
> the marks may not be consistent across networks.
> 
> I fully believe the tit is automated for TiVo Bolt.


You could be correct. But if that is true, why did TiVo advertise for people to watch video feeds in North Carolina? And if it's so easy to detect commercial breaks, why did Direct TV only do 4 feeds? Why would TiVo only do 20? I also take it of evidence of manual intervention the fact that SkipMode is not immediately available, and is irregularly available; if the process were 100% automated SkipMode would be available in real-time and consistently on-time for every program.

As you say, there are many automated tools using different protocols for local commercial insertion; they use different methods, some of which depend upon information not included in the video stream. As you say, there are many tools for automated commercial detection; I am aware of none that do a perfect job. I am sure that TiVo's North Carolinas are aided by machine recognition but do a manual edit for the final chop.

I can understand your not wanting to imagine doing this job yourself; but many people would find this work very preferable to working on an assembly line or in a call center.


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## bareyb

Huh. It will be interesting to see how well it actually works in the wild. I'm skeptical. Especially if people in the South are involved.


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## zerdian1

I am not saying that TiVo might employ an army to verify commercials.
they may even do a lot of it manually.
But there is so much technology already invented that can be improved.
The army might just be to make sure there are fewer goofs than in other systems.

Dish Hopper also had only 4 networks (the big 4: ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox)
and they only did it from 8 to 11 in primetime.
the commercial skip was the HOPPER and it was done overnight and available the next day.

ReplayTV had a very good commercial skipper that was fully automated. It was not perfect but it was on all channels and worked quite well. TiVo ducked the commercial skip feature and let ReplayTV fight the wars.

TiVo is still here and ReplayTV is long gone, sorry to say. 
I really liked my ReplayTVs that I had in several houses. 
I could send shows from one house to another between my home networks or 
from one TV to another TV in my home network.



ej42137 said:


> You could be correct. But if that is true, why did TiVo advertise for people to watch video feeds in North Carolina? And if it's so easy to detect commercial breaks, why did Direct TV only do 4 feeds? Why would TiVo only do 20? I also take it of evidence of manual intervention the fact that SkipMode is not immediately available, and is irregularly available; if the process were 100% automated SkipMode would be available in real-time and consistently on-time for every program.
> 
> As you say, there are many automated tools using different protocols for local commercial insertion; they use different methods, some of which depend upon information not included in the video stream. As you say, there are many tools for automated commercial detection; I am aware of none that do a perfect job. I am sure that TiVo's North Carolinas are aided by machine recognition but do a manual edit for the final chop.
> 
> I can understand your not wanting to imagine doing this job yourself; but many people would find this work very preferable to working on an assembly line or in a call center.


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## atmuscarella

bareyb said:


> Huh. It will be interesting to see how well it actually works in the wild. I'm skeptical. Especially if people in the South are involved.


SkipMode works very well, except for the occasional show that doesn't get it, which hasn't been many for me.


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## aaronwt

atmuscarella said:


> SkipMode works very well, except for the occasional show that doesn't get it, which hasn't been many for me.


I wish all shows would have it. Most of my recordings don't get Skip mode. But then if the show isn't on those twenty networks, and not in prime time, they won't have Skip mode any way. And even some shows I have recorded meeting that criteria never get skip mode on my Bolts. Like iZombie and The Flash.


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## Dan203

I've had a few failures, but for the most part the majority of shows that are suppise to get it do get it for me.


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## HarperVision

zerdian1 said:


> ......... I fully believe the tit is automated for TiVo Bolt.


Well now THAT is an interesting new feature on the Bolt! 

TiVo "guy" must be TiVo "gal" starting with the Bolt? 

SkipMode has worked well for me as well except for a couple missed shows and I also noticed this past Friday when my wife and I were watching Last Man Standing that the second to the last skip tick took us past the commercial break and to the final 30 second closing segment of the show. We were like "wow, it's over already?" Then I realized it must've been SkipMode that failed, and it was.


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## BigJimOutlaw

SkipMode nails the primetime stuff pretty well, but reruns, daytime, and late night coverage works for crap here.

Currently on the box...

4 out of 6 South Park episodes have Skip (CC reruns).
3 out of 8 Big Bangs have Skip. (TBS reruns)
0 out of 8 Judge Judy's have Skip (NEW Fox episodes).
2 out of 5 Colbert's this week.


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## Dan203

Colbert seems to get thrown off on nights when there is football.


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## Dan203

FYI SkipMode works by matching up captioning data. So reruns on channels that trim or speed up the video might throw off the captions and screw up the skp data.


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## mikeyts

Dan203 said:


> FYI SkipMode works by matching up captioning data. So reruns on channels that trim or speed up the video might throw off the captions and screw up the skp data.


I was told by a TiVo employee that SkipMode works using data collected by teams of people monitoring programming and marking the beginnings and endings of ad breaks. They refer to it as being "curated". That's why it only works on a limited set of channels for programs which air between 4 PM and midnight (with an extra half hour for the end of the first late night talk shows on CBS, NBC and ABC ); could be 3-11 PM in Central Time markets, but maybe they just get more late night programming, the end of prime time being 10 PM for them. Essentially an 8 hour work day for each of those groups. If reruns air on the covered channels during the covered hours the SkipMode data should be available and correct.


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## Steve28

Yeah, I was under the impression they already told everyone it's human-powered. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## mikeyts

From this support page on TiVo's site :



> How it works
> 
> A dedicated team of TV-enthusiasts watches popular shows as they air and note where programming resumes after commercial breaks. This information is applied over the programs by the TiVo service as soon as it is available.
> 
> The actual program itself is never altered and the commercials remain in the recorded programming, where you can rewind and watch them at your convenience.
> 
> Things to know
> 
> For popular shows, our team usually has SkipMode information updated for a show within 1 hour of the show ending.
> 
> SkipMode only applies to recorded programs, and only to recorded programs which have been marked for commercials by our team. SkipMode can't fast-forward live television.
> 
> SkipMode requires you to use the remote to skip sections. The TiVo BOLT itself does not automatically skip through the commercial breaks.
> 
> When you use SkipMode, the commercial breaks are being skipped. The commercial breaks have not been removed from the program.
> 
> Submit feedback for SkipMode
> 
> If you have any issues while using SkipMode, fill out this short survey. We're working hard to perfect SkipMode so you can watch only the content you want to watch!


For some reason I was thinking that they mark the beginnings of the breaks, but since they're not automatically skipping, they only need to mark the endings.

I like "you can rewind and watch them at your convenience". We're all going to do that, right ? Don't worry advertisers .


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## wscottcross

mikeyts said:


> From this support page on TiVo's site :
> 
> For some reason I was thinking that they mark the beginnings of the breaks, but since they're not automatically skipping, they only need to mark the endings.
> 
> I like "you can rewind and watch them at your convenience". We're all going to do that, right ? Don't worry advertisers .


But the Bolt prompts you to hit the "D" button as soon as the commercials start so they must be marking the start as well.

I was used to my Media Center PC running Comskip and DVRMS Toolbox in the background and automatically skipping commercials for us. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good and you didn't have to do anything unless it missed. I would imagine they are using something similar with someone verifying the tags. It has been quite accurate for us so far on the shows that have it. I do like that it reminds you to hit the "D" button in case I'm spacing out.


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## mikeyts

wscottcross said:


> I was used to my Media Center PC running Comskip and DVRMS Toolbox in the background and automatically skipping commercials for us. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good and you didn't have to do anything unless it missed. I would imagine they are using something similar with someone verifying the tags. It has been quite accurate for us so far on the shows that have it. I do like that it reminds you to hit the "D" button in case I'm spacing out.


Why would they need that? Why not have 20 people sit and watch the shows live, marking the ads? Exactly how soon after your recording finishes is the SkipMode function available?


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## Dan203

mikeyts said:


> I was told by a TiVo employee that SkipMode works using data collected by teams of people monitoring programming and marking the beginnings and endings of ad breaks. They refer to it as being "curated". That's why it only works on a limited set of channels for programs which air between 4 PM and midnight (with an extra half hour for the end of the first late night talk shows on CBS, NBC and ABC ); could be 3-11 PM in Central Time markets, but maybe they just get more late night programming, the end of prime time being 10 PM for them. Essentially an 8 hour work day for each of those groups. If reruns air on the covered channels during the covered hours the SkipMode data should be available and correct.


Yes the start and end points of each show segment are marked by a human. But the way they can take that data and apply it to the recording on your TiVo and the one on mine, which may be from different affiliates with slightly different commercial durrations, and have different amounts of padding/clipping is by syncing each segment using the captioning data. That's the automated part of the process. Trust me I've looked in to this indepth over the last few days.

One reason I think reruns have issues is because the SkipMode data is based on the content ID of each show/episode, which I believe is the same for first runs and reruns of a given episode. So the SkipMode data is only ever generated once per episode, probably from the first time it aired after SkipMode went into effect. If the episode you record has different segment lengths due to cutting or being sped up then the pattern matching used to sync the segements via the captions will fail and SkipMode won't work.


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## wscottcross

mikeyts said:


> Why would they need that? Why not have 20 people sit and watch the shows live, marking the ads? Exactly how soon after your recording finishes is the SkipMode function available?


Because each person could handle several shows if all they are doing is verifying the tags, and they would need fewer people employed. I'm just looking at it from a business perspective. That's how I would do it if it was my business decision. 
The skip function is available within a few minutes of the show ending in most cases.


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## zerdian1

Surprised that TiVo used Manual vs. Auto SkipMode.

Broadcasters and local affiliates have had various automated tools to place commercials or commercial breaks for decades.

Variations of these have been taken advantage of by enterprising people to write Sw or program HW to jump over commercials.

I could not believe that TiVo chose a manual approach that requires that TiVo continue to pay an army of commercial break markers or curators.

As someone pointed out, if the viewer has to push the D button then only the return to show need be marked.
of course if you press D while watching the Show then it will jump to the next end of commercial break, skipping that show segment.
If they have a Start of commercial break and a different end of commercial break, then the D button will only skip when in a commercial segment.

The commercial skip (SkipMode) will not work on locally broadcast shows on the 20 or so networks.

It also will not work on a local station affiliate that inserted a commercial or group of commercials that are not on the Broadcasters breakpoint that the curators used in their market.

Thanks Dan203.



Dan203 said:


> Yes the start and end points of each show segment are marked by a human. But the way they can take that data and apply it to the recording on your TiVo and the one on mine, which may be from different affiliates with slightly different commercial durrations, and have different amounts of padding/clipping is by syncing each segment using the captioning data. That's the automated part of the process. Trust me I've looked in to this indepth over the last few days.
> 
> One reason I think reruns have issues is because the SkipMode data is based on the content ID of each show/episode, which I believe is the same for first runs and reruns of a given episode. So the SkipMode data is only ever generated once per episode, probably from the first time it aired after SkipMode went into effect. If the episode you record has different segment lengths due to cutting or being sped up then the pattern matching used to sync the segements via the captions will fail and SkipMode won't work.


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## aaronwt

If TiVo chose a fully automated approach it wouldn't be accurate. And if it isn't accurate there is no point in using Skip mode.


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## Dan203

zerdian1 said:


> As someone pointed out, if the viewer has to push the D button then only the return to show need be marked.
> of course if you press D while watching the Show then it will jump to the next end of commercial break, skipping that show segment.
> If they have a Start of commercial break and a different end of commercial break, then the D button will only skip when in a commercial segment.


The end of segment marker is used by the TiVo to determine when to play the chime and display the message that pressing D will skip the commercial. Otherwise you're right, that the skip feature only uses the start points for actual skipping.


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## Dan203

aaronwt said:


> If TiVo chose a fully automated approach it wouldn't be accurate. And if it isn't accurate there is no point in using Skip mode.


Exactly, there is no 100% accurate method for automatically detecting commercials. Even the best commercial detection software out there is only 90% accurate. From what I understand there are pretty strict guidelines in place here, based on the Dish court decision, and TiVo has to be very careful not to actually skip any of the show content. So even if they do use an automated solution they still need a human to verify the marks just to be safe.


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## HobokenSkier

bareyb said:


> I can't imagine that would or could possibly be true. There are thousands of shows on dozens of networks all with a multiple commercials. There has to be commercial markers of some kind already in the show that they are simply picking up on. I know the old Proscan VCR's that had commercial skip used a similar technology.


But they are only doing ~20 channels in peak viewing hours. So this roughly leads to a team of 20 on minimum wage being paid to watch tv and Mark commercials every evening.


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## mattack

Possibly dumb question, but SkipMode still works properly with a show that has padding or is truncated? (The latter is slightly more of a curiosity, the former is really useful.)

e.g. I sure hope the times are independent of me having pre or post pad..

but the latter issue.. what happens if your show is truncated in the middle of a commercial break and you hit the skip button before the last break? Does it go to the "delete now?" screen, or does it go back to now playing, or what?


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## zerdian1

DAN203,
WHAT IS THE DISH COURT DECISION?

I have been a Dish Network customer for over 10 years and 
currently use the Dish Hopper.
so far they have been limited to 4 networks in primetime only, 
8 to 11 Mon-Sat and 7 to 11 Sun for ABC, CBS, NBC & FOX.
they only mark them with a kangaroo around MidNight, so you can watch them commercial free the next day.
the survey for the networks said that 85% of viewer watch primetime shows in realtime as they are broadcast.
So only 15% take advantage of Commercial HOP in the Hopper.

I am curious what the court decision was and what was tried in court.

Why is it important not to skip part of the show?
other than the viewer would miss part of the show.
but most would never notice it with all the cutting & editing that goes on on local channels.
I know some of the automated tools do sometimes jump to next segment's endow commercial, skipping the whole 10 minute or so segment.



Dan203 said:


> Exactly, there is no 100% accurate method for automatically detecting commercials. Even the best commercial detection software out there is only 90% accurate. From what I understand there are pretty strict guidelines in place here, based on the Dish court decision, and TiVo has to be very careful not to actually skip any of the show content. So even if they do use an automated solution they still need a human to verify the marks just to be safe.


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## mikeyts

SkipMode can be used to intentionally skip to the end of the next commercial break, if you press the button during the program instead of an ad. Could be useful for skipping segments of a talk show or something similar.

I'm going to order one of these tomorrow to replace my Roamio Basic. Cannot wait to play with it .


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## ej42137

HobokenSkier said:


> But they are only doing ~20 channels in peak viewing hours. So this roughly leads to a team of 20 on minimum wage being paid to watch tv and Mark commercials every evening.


Surely a person can do more that one program in an hour; without trying very hard it only takes me a few minutes to find commercials even without software doing a preliminary scan for me; when I use the Ad-Detective feature of VideoReDo it is significantly faster. Someone doing this for a living would certainly do it more efficiently than I. If they've got twenty people doing this they must have serious expansion plans.


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## HobokenSkier

ej42137 said:


> Surely a person can do more that one program in an hour; without trying very hard it only takes me a few minutes to find commercials even without software doing a preliminary scan for me; when I use the Ad-Detective feature of VideoReDo it is significantly faster. Someone doing this for a living would certainly do it more efficiently than I. If they've got twenty people doing this they must have serious expansion plans.


Surely they can. Thing is timing. Most are published within the hour.


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## atmuscarella

mattack said:


> Possibly dumb question, but SkipMode still works properly with a show that has padding or is truncated? (The latter is slightly more of a curiosity, the former is really useful.)
> 
> e.g. I sure hope the times are independent of me having pre or post pad..
> 
> but the latter issue.. what happens if your show is truncated in the middle of a commercial break and you hit the skip button before the last break? Does it go to the "delete now?" screen, or does it go back to now playing, or what?


SkipMode works really well for me Sunday nights when football pushes everything back. If Madam Secretary start time is pushed back say 23 minutes in the bast you had to faster forward until you found the start of the show, with SkipMode you hit the skip button at the start and it finds the actual start of the show. SkipMode stops working at the end of the show so it really does nothing for post padding. Don't know about truncated shows.


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## Dan203

zerdian1 said:


> DAN
> WHAT IS THE DISH COURT DECISION?
> 
> I have been a Dish Network customer for over 10 years and
> currently use the Dish Hopper.
> so far they have been limited to 4 networks in primetime only,
> 8 to 11 Mon-Sat and 7 to 11 Sun for ABC, CBS, NBC & FOX.
> they only mark them with a kangaroo around MidNight, so you can watch them commercial free the next day.
> the survey for the networks said that 85% of viewer watch primetime shows in realtime as they are broadcast.
> So only 15% take advantage of Commercial HOP in the Hopper.
> 
> I am curious what the court decision was and what was tried in court.
> 
> Why is it important not to skip part of the show?
> other than the viewer would miss part of the show.
> but most would never notice it with all the cutting & editing that goes on on local channels.
> I know some of the automated tools do sometimes jump to next segment's endow commercial, skipping the whole 10 minute or so segment.


I'm not an expert on it, but someone surmised it in another thread. Apparently when Dish got sued by Fox over thier autohop feature the judge that dismissed the case specifically said something that implied the feature was OK only because they weren't skipping the actual content. I'll see if I can find the thread and post a link.


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## astrohip

zerdian1 said:


> DAN
> WHAT IS THE DISH COURT DECISION?


I'm not Dan, and have never played him on TV. But as I recall...

To steer clear of a lawsuit, first was the commercial skipping needed to be viewer requested. Not auto-skipped by the device or provider. But requested by an actual action. Like clicking a button.

Second, it needed to return control to the viewer BEFORE the show started back up. Being a second early was fine. Being a second late (eg, missing a split second of the actual show) violated the copyright provisions of the show's creators. Don't ask me how or why, but that seems to be a sticking point.

So by using real live people to mark the return point, and making sure that return point is not a split second late, they can avoid legal issues.

This is all second-hand info on my part, read from other posts on this forum.


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## Anchorman

I would think that these "live people" could handle a one hour show in just a minute or less if all they had to do was auto skip each commercial and verify that it didn't eat into the show. And they probably have a modified version of skip mode that jumps from the end of one commercial to the end of the next one.


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## TonyD79

Anchorman said:


> I would think that these "live people" could handle a one hour show in just a minute or less if all they had to do was auto skip each commercial and verify that it didn't eat into the show. And they probably have a modified version of skip mode that jumps from the end of one commercial to the end of the next one.


I don't know any activity that takes a minute. That sounds likely for far more mistakes than have been seen.


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## Dan203

Anchorman said:


> I would think that these "live people" could handle a one hour show in just a minute or less if all they had to do was auto skip each commercial and verify that it didn't eat into the show. And they probably have a modified version of skip mode that jumps from the end of one commercial to the end of the next one.


They don't mark the commercials, they mark the show segments. Commercials can change from market to market, but the show itself and the duration of it's segments are static. So they mark the segment start/end points and assume the rest are commercials.

As for how long it takes... who knows. Probably not long. If all I had to do was scan through a show on my TiVo and press a button at the start/end of each segment it probably wouldn't take more then a couple of minutes. If there is any sort of automated assist it could take less.


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## gweempose

I just wish these guys would err on the side of showing a tiny bit of the commercial instead of cutting out a tiny bit of the show.


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## jrtroo

gweempose said:


> I just wish these guys would err on the side of showing a tiny bit of the commercial instead of cutting out a tiny bit of the show.


Based upon someone here who investigated the issues with the hopper lawsuit, that is exactly what is supposed to happen. No amount of show should be skipped.


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## Dan203

It's based on captions, so a shift in the caption alignment can throw off the segments. 

Also when they skip they have to jump to an I frame (or IDR in the case of H.264) to start decoding. So it's possible the skip point is OK and due to the encoding of your specific episode it might skip further in to the show then intended.


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## TonyD79

jrtroo said:


> Based upon someone here who investigated the issues with the hopper lawsuit, that is exactly what is supposed to happen. No amount of show should be skipped.


Almost every time has shown a slight bit of commercial or the dark screen between for me.


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## Dan203

I've had it jump like a 1/2 second into the show and had to back it up to catch what they said. But that's rare. 99% of the time I see a bit of the commercial before the show starts.


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## rainwater

TonyD79 said:


> Almost every time has shown a slight bit of commercial or the dark screen between for me.


Not for me. I would say about 25% of the shows I watch have at least one skip point that is missing a second of audio.


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## TonyD79

rainwater said:


> Not for me. I would say about 25% of the shows I watch have at least one skip point that is missing a second of audio.


The audio may be more of a synching issue than the skip itself.

I've seen (heard?) a few times when I trick play or come out of an app where it takes a fraction of a second to get audio back.

If you are seeing video, then the skip marking is not the problem.


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## rainwater

TonyD79 said:


> The audio may be more of a synching issue than the skip itself.
> 
> I've seen (heard?) a few times when I trick play or come out of an app where it takes a fraction of a second to get audio back.
> 
> If you are seeing video, then the skip marking is not the problem.


The skip marking is the problem. TiVo is aware of the delay. They could surely build it into their skip marking system.


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## TonyD79

rainwater said:


> The skip marking is the problem. TiVo is aware of the delay. They could surely build it into their skip marking system.


I don't agree. I don't get the audio delay. Why do you assume it is a TiVo responsibility to adjust to every system?


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## rainwater

TonyD79 said:


> I don't agree. I don't get the audio delay. Why do you assume it is a TiVo responsibility to adjust to every system?


Because it is a bad experience. It would not ruin the experience to build a half second buffer on skip marking.


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## Rick29690

Anyone still monitoring this thread? Is SM still working? Have a Roamio, and SM seems to appear more and more rarely.


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## lujan

I thought TiVo had sent out a message where they say they're working on the "Skip Mode" feature so that it may not be working for a little while until they finish working on it?


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## aaronwt

lujan said:


> I thought TiVo had sent out a message where they say they're working on the "Skip Mode" feature so that it may not be working for a little while until they finish working on it?


 I was wondering what was going on. It has been very annoying lately with shows either not having skip mode. Or if it has it, not correctly marked. And would skip over content in the show.


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## JoeKustra

aaronwt said:


> I was wondering what was going on. It has been very annoying lately with shows either not having skip mode. Or if it has it, not correctly marked. And would skip over content in the show.


Last night, Thursday, every new program on CBS, NBC and ABC (including late night) had SM BUT...

It is taking 10 to 24 hours to be applied. So something is changing.


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## ClearToLand

wscottcross said:


> I understand WHAT is does, *what I'm looking for is the mechanics of HOW it does it*. Do they push a skip file to the Bolt? Is it some metadata that gets added to the recording? Is it possible to use that data for commercial skipping in some third party app such as VideoReDo?


Since this thread has become active again (due to the title no doubt  ), the *BEST* answer, IMHO, should be here too (hard to find due to the title no doubt  ):

*The way skip mode works is like this...* <--- That's *NOT* the thread title!!!  ​
Thanks @Dan203 ! :thumbsup:


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## Dan203

ClearToLand said:


> Since this thread has become active again (due to the title no doubt  ), the *BEST* answer, IMHO, should be here too (hard to find due to the title no doubt  ):
> 
> *The way skip mode works is like this...* <--- That's *NOT* the thread title!!!  ​
> Thanks @Dan203 ! :thumbsup:


I tried like hell to reverse engineering their hash so I could use the skip data in VideoReDo, but cryptography is not my specialty so I couldn't figure it out.


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## DouglasPHill

I never would have thought it was that complicated.


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## johnd01

Why does it take so long for shows to be marked for SM?
Why are there so many shows that do not get marked?
Most of the shows I watch are only a few hours old and are not marked. However, if I look at the shows a day or two old, many more are marked. 
I think there should be a way for people who FF (manually skip) would leave marks that tivo could read. Then, after a set number of people have FFed, a show tivo could make statistical analyses and generate SM information for the rest of us.


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## sender_name

Not even working correctly right now on my Tivo mini/Bolt....Show says "SKIP" recorded last night...Hit skip...BONG...channel up BONG....


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## johnd01

sender_name said:


> Not even working correctly right now on my Tivo mini/Bolt....Show says "SKIP" recorded last night...Hit skip...BONG...channel up BONG....


Are you sure you were watching a recorded show? It must have been because you see "SKIP" unless you are in the now playing list.


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