Nice! Come March, Tablo DVR owners will be able to automatically skip commercials while playing back television recordings. Unlike TiVo’s somewhat kneecapped SkipMode that only indexes popular, primetime programming and requires manual intervention at each break, Tablo’s solution should index just about everything* and will be automated:
Tablo’s commercial-skipping magic is a cloud-based hybrid of digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms and machine learning. When enabled, pesky ads are accurately and automatically detected so Tablo apps on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV can hop right past them.
A HDHomeRun paired with the Channels DVR service also provides OTA comskip, but I need to review their implementation. Having said that, we do know Channels requires additional hardware and is available to fewer clients (like Roku).
*In talking to the folks behind Tablo, it seems news programming has been particularly difficult to programatically identify given the numerous cuts… and presumably local news is doubly challenging given less predictable breaks. As such, news will be excluded. But all our important serial programming should be routinely and properly tagged.
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As I understand it, skipping commercials has a degree of risk involved. If you skip ONLY the commercial, you're okay. But if even a few seconds of the TV show is accidentally clipped, it's a copyright concern, and will bring the legal wrath of the TV gods down on you. That's why TiVo does it the way they do it. If Tablo screws up, are they inviting a legal challenge?
Well... I'm not a copyright lawyer. But I doubt they're big enough to matter at this point for any sort of infraction as the studio/network system has bigger fish to fry. Having said that, they're utilizing to same approach the DISH Hopper does (did?) in making the local viewer/owner choose to automatically skip the commercials for the following content - from what I recall, that changes the onus/responsibility and we'd be within our rights to make the attempt.
So, if memory serves it's how the skip is implemented. If it cus it out automatically it's a copyright issue, if it just flags the skippable area, which Tivo does, I think it's fine.
Any Tivo news from CES 2019? All I've seen so far is their deal with Verizon for data sharing or something.
The news is coming, but I’m not sure when... it’s something I’ve been pining for a long time.