Hello everyone. I have had my Tablo for about 6 months now with the commercial skip. My experience with it has been good and bad. On some of the channels that I know for a fact have great signal when I go to play back the recording it will say commercial skip failed and on some recordings it does great. Sometimes it will show the yellow line were there are no commercials. I know it is not very expensive but I seriously have thought about canceling it and just fast forward thru them. The Tablo has nice big tiles and it is easy to know were to stop. On the other hand the commercial skip was one of the reasons that I purchased the Tablo. Tablo at the very least should not charge for the service until they can get it working like it should. Let me know if anyone else are having the same issues.
You can read the latest CS thread from 6 days ago.
Of course I always thought that the idea of Machine Learning was that somehow the ML is taught. Thus it learns. And since ML is used in many applications it’s almost like saying that if you have a car with autopilot(ML) and your street is considered an “odd outlier” your car can’t use autopilot in your neighborhood.
As mentioned above, one of the checks we do is to determine if the recording has many more or much fewer ads than expected for that type and length of program.
In order for the AI & DSP tools we use to identify and mark the commercial breaks isn’t confused by this odd outlier, potentially spitting out a recording with erratic skips, we choose instead to not completely process that recording.
For some it probably works great but in my case it is hit and miss. If Tablo is going to advertise the commercial skip as a feature of the Tablo it should at least work correctly. Donr advertise something that just works part of the time.
I’m not saying anything. Just pointing you to the latest forum thread.
At $20, CS is useful to me. But it’s not clear if tablo even knows which episodes have incorrect CS processing. And I don’t see them reaching out to collect any information.
If it supposedly failed because of signal, the message will specify. If it “just didn’t work” here’s some vaguely specific Automatic Commercial Skip Error Messages – Tablo. They give some generalized explanations, some more specialized.
Concluding:
If you believe the Automatic Commercial Skip error messages being displayed are incorrect, please touch base with Tablo support with specific details.
There are a number of sub-channels and programs where the commercials are too long. And these don’t get processed. And result in a failure message.
One of the CS threads had the actual amount of time. So CS processing on some sub-channels can be hit or miss. For X-Files on Comet, CS has been pretty solid. But a major network show like James Corden CS seems to always puke.
I have noticed the channel that I have the most problems on is the Cozi channel and the signal on that channel is very good. But I have also had a few problems with some of the major network channels too. Maybe one day they will get it working at a hundred percent. I also have the Airtv Player which I use as well with my OTA channels and sling tv which is nice because it combines all the channels in to 1 guide and it works great and it also will pause live tv with the tiles so you can see when you fast forward which Tablo does not do
Thanks for starting this thread. And for having perfect timing as well!! I’m seriously thinking about switching from TIVO, which I’m fed up with, to Tablo. One of the questions I had was about the commercial skip feature. TIVO’s commercial skip, it’s been my experience, work fairly well. It’s about the only thing of TIVO that does work well.
Don’t get Tablo because of Commercial Skip. Commercial Skip should be free as the OP said until they work out the bugs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Very frustrating if you expect it to work throughout your recorded shows.
Nothing is free. Besides the government I don’t remember a public company who has a business plan to lose money.
Instead of it’s development and maintenance cost being limited to those who want it(subscribe), these costs would be paid for by an increase in the unit price and/or base(guide) subscription.
Thanks everyone for your replies. I think for the time being I will hang on to the tablo. I am currently watching some recorded shows and the commercial skip has worked perfect for 3 shows. Go figure because it is a hit and miss thing and has been since I have has it
It is just unreliable, sometime it works and sometimes not, it also misses EVERY ONE near the end of a show in most but not all shows. It is not worth paying for IMO since lulls you into thinking you do not have to so anything and then you have to grab your remote to the playback device and FF anyway.