Over the last week I recorded about 12 shows. 100% commercial skip success.
I think the OP has problems specific to their unit.
Since the release of 2.2.28 CS success has notably improved - for me.
Okay? I am at my wits end with this subject and possible end, with resolution! When we do record with Tablo, it is usually PBS shows with no commercial interruptions in the first place. So, on occasion, we record Main Stream broadcast shows as Survivor. Knowing that this show has commercials, you would think that Automatic Commercial Skip, would be useful and Automatic? I recorded the Survivor show and there was no Automatic Commercial Skip detected/recorded? I am not sure, if this particular program offered a Tablo user, the commercial skip feature? How would I know that? Is there a place/guide one can find/view programs that, offer that feature? Anyway, I have checked and rechecked all the “Buttons” that need to be “On” for A.C.S and they are on!
taboo provides a lot of info for users, start at tablotv.com, in the upper right search type in Commercial Skip
https://www.tablotv.com/tablo-premium-service/
perhaps you missed a button, check box or just misunderstood.
Also, certain networks, program types, and shows are always ineligible for commercial skip processing including:
- [NETWORK] PBS
- [NETWORK] TVO
- [PROGRAM TYPE] News
- [PROGRAM TYPE] Manual Recording
- [SHOW] American Dad
- [SHOW] South Park
- [SHOW] Family Guy
- [SHOW] The Cleveland Show
- [SHOW] 20/20
- [SHOW] 60 minutes
Thank You!!
OK, I’ve read the questions and answers, and I’ve had an “active” “Premium” subscription since January, I switched then to the annual plan for both the Guide and Commercial skip to help eliminate any possible problems. This problem started after the .28 update last week.
Overall no issues other than this following one, so far.
In my recordings it shows as normal for commercial skip, yellow dot with a check, on the network shows we like to watch and says it was done and ready. However, on the recordings themselves the playback bar where the commercials are, are now gray and so, no automatic skipping. I tried turning the feature off and then on again to no avail. There isn’t too much about it other than it should work so looking at ideas or options here now.
Thanks in advance.
If it is a grey bar that means you have it set up to process commercial skip but not to actually skip them. If you use a Roku this would be when you FF then press down. this would be in a show. I think this is how you do it Roku and I am guessing the other players are somewhat similar.
The sections should be yellow if you’ve got the feature on within the playback window. You may have toggled it ON and then OFF again in your last attempt.
I have yet to get commercial skip to work even once. I opened a support ticket, set my Tablo on remote access. They said I had many shows showing ready for commercial skip. We usually only watch network shows ABC, NBC, CBS first run or news. I have yet to see a yellow or red check on any recordings and we usually watch them a full day after they have recorded. For sure my “commercial skip” box is checked, not sure what else to do.
What playback device?
LG smart TV, hard drive is a WD 4 TB. TV is hard wired to the router as is Tablo
Can you try another playback device such as a smartphone or tablet?
For example the iPhone app says “Commercial skip: Ready”, see screenshot below.
From the Tablo Support pages:
Is Automatic Commercial Skip coming to the Tablo app for Samsung or LG Smart TVs?
At this time, the player software on Samsung and LG Smart TVs is incompatible with the Automatic Commercial Skip feature. We will re-evaluate the possibility of adding this feature to these platforms in the future.
So, it appears that the reason you aren’t able to use Commercial Skip is because LG app for Tablo doesn’t support it yet.
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Another Tablo Support page, aptly named Error Messages -Automatic Commercial Skip Error Messages – Tablo says:
The the iOS & Android mobile and web apps are compatible with the feature but will NOT show success/failure messages.
While there’s a screen shot of iOS with the message. The web app will -Optimized for Chrome - why no "Commercial Skip: Ready" - depending which browser you use. It’s difficult to pin down exactly for sure what’s going on. Pages get re-written left with original dates making it a challenge to follow any changes.
Many pages claim there’s performance improvements while a few users state support suggest they try using one for a “fix”.
Thank you.
Overall, commercial skip works and is one of the best features in my opinion. We actually miss it when viewing shows on other apps/devices. Sure, on occasion it’s a little off, or doesn’t work due to a crappy signal, but for the most part, works well. It is interesting that for certain shows, like Judge Judy, the last or second to last commercial break doesn’t recognize when the show comes back on and skips over like 10 mins of show… every single time. Curious how the skip works and why it would consistently miss that return all the time.
Repeatable issues like this are super helpful for us to know. I’ll make sure to pass this along to the team so they can perhaps adjust the algorithm or create a custom ‘recipe’ for this show.
Anyone else seeing this on Judge Judy?
In SurLaTablo’s commercial cutting algorithm, I called this “the postscript”. As SurLaTablo does merely black frame detection, the problem with postscripts is that there is little difference block wise between a run of commercials and a postscript. If both runs are of similar size, the question is… which is real, which is commercial?
So, in SurLaTablo, the postscript features basically disables commercial handling at the end of a show… yes, you will get that last set of commercials, but you’ll also get to see who won final Jeopardy.
Commercial detection is hard. Even harder if you’re only doing black frame detection (like SurLaTablo).
So, Tablo (OG style), all recordings are broken into a series of mpeg4-ts elements. That defines the granularity at which things work on the Tablo. Now, beyond this, I’m not sure what they do… but for them it would be figuring out which ts segments belong and which don’t. That could be a harder algorithm than what SurLaTablo does, because I slap all the ts file together before attempting detection.
For Tablo’s commercial detection, they are (I believe), creating a mechanism to skip from one element of the playlist to something down the road in the playlist (skipping the commercial ts files). Just not sure how they can look at a ts file and determine if it’s a commercial. They may be doing “something” with some ts concatenations and analysis to better determine this.
Regardless, whatever their algorithm is, I believe they are having some of the same problems I saw when dealing with those short postscripts at the end of shows.
With that said, Tablo’s commercial detection is actually pretty good. I’ve compared theirs to SurLaTablo, and while SLT did win in some cases, there were plenty of others where Tablo’s solution was better.
I believe SLT does better in the case of Judge Judy (for example). But it’s a post process extraction piece of software. It leaves you with an extracted recording with commericals removed (not skipped). And if it makes a mistake, you might not be terribly happy.
I did share my idea that SLT might do better with some kind of “chapter” insertion and the ease to skip chapters… but it’s beyond something integrated into most players. And with that said, it might be possible to create a “playlist” approach… but pretty radical. But definitely something that fits for Tablo to do.
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