Over the last few weeks I’ve been seeing the “Program doesn’t meet the criteria for commercial skip” error on most recordings and recordings that I know DO meet the criteria.
For instance, right now I have three episodes of Jeopardy recorded. Two of them are marked with the yellow indicator for commercial skip. The third (actually the second of three) has this error.
I have this error on the one episode of Ghosts that I have yet to watch.
I have 7 episodes of Family Feud recorded. Two show this error.
I have the inaugural USFL game recorded and it too shows the error.
This is showing up way too frequently on shows that have no reason for it.
Anyone else seeing this?
BTW, anyone else have the LED lights go out on your Tablo Quad? My LEDs simply don’t turn on anymore and I’ve confirmed it is not the setting menu option.
As for “no reason for it”, commercial discovery is actually pretty difficult.
What does it mean to you to “meet the criteria”?
I’m not saying some couldn’t have been caused by something other than improper detection, but I do know that it can be difficult.
Edit: USFL wise, I missed the first week. but have setup recording for this week. If it happens on something we have in common, I can at least test with my own commercial detection and maybe see where the difficulties are.
The “meet the criteria” is Tablo’s words, not mine. It’s literally what the error reads. What I mean by reason is that it’s not working on shows that DO meet the criteria defined by Tablo. There’s a support article that lists certain shows that commercial skip will not work on, like all shows on PBS.
But this error showing on a few episodes of a show where commercial skip is known to work makes the error useless. If there’s an issue with a specific recording then tell me what the actual issue is? Was it a weak signal? Was it an unavailable tuner? Was it a lost internet connection?
Telling me that the show doesn’t meet the criteria for commercial skip when I’m looking at episodes that have commercial skip working doesn’t help with any troubleshooting.
This generally happens when programs have either an abnormal amount (fewer or more than average) or length (shorter or longer than average) commercial breaks. This can and does happen if a program is different from one week to the next.
As for the LED on your Tablo, are you sure that the LED toggle isn’t set to off? It’s worth a second look.
I’ve confirmed several times that the LEDs don’t work regardless of the LED setting.
So what I gleaned from your response is that the error is useless. Jeopardy has the same commercial breaks for every daily episode. The format of this show hasn’t changed in 35 years.
So tell us what’s actually triggering the error for a specific episode? That would help troubleshoot.
Just chiming in on shows with short postscripts. A short postscript vs a singular commercial is very very difficult to determine. If a show “ends” (almost), has a brief commercial, then a brief postscript for the show, and then a commercial, well… I’m hoping you can see how these could be problematic.
I can’t emphasize just how difficult this is.
So difficult that in SurLaTablo’s case, I have an option to just “forget it about it” when it comes to commercial cutting towards the end of a show. Yes, you’ll get all the commercials towards the end, but you’ll also get that valuable postscript (rapid fire final jeopardy results for example).
And it’s not just game shows, there’s a ton of content like this for normal serial shows, and it can vary by show in the same season and somewhat by season.
I get that you are trying to explain that commercial detection is difficult. However, they’ve obviously figured this out, to some point. If it works on Monday’s and Wednesday’s episodes but fails on Tuesday’s then there’s clearly something different between them and telling me the show doesn’t meet the criteria when surely it did on Monday and Wednesday does NOT explain what went wrong. The show meets their defined criteria and commercial skip should work.
If the episode has an issue then tell us that. However, for a show who’s format hasn’t changed in 35 years, they ought to be able to get this right. AND nothing in this thread tells me why this is now happening over and over again. I only once saw this error message soon after the beta started and now I’m seeing it on most every show and multiple times a week in each of these shows.
So again I’m asking if anyone else is seeing an uptick with this error? If so maybe there’s an issue with the commercial detection server?
Or is there an issue going on with my personal Tablo (like along with the lights not working) and should I be resetting or replacing it?
Your frustration at the situation is understandable. Commercial skip can be very obtuse feature of the Tablo. The message, “Program doesn’t meet the criteria for commercial skip” you are seeing seems to be inconsistent and, probably, wrong. My GUESS is that the message is some sort of ‘fall through’ message generated when the code in the algorithm cannot determine a more definite answer. I have never seen that message, for what little good that does. Tablo are very reticent to reveal much about their algorithms, but it seems rather clear that it is complex and depends on a wide range of factors.
One of the factors that seems high on the list is signal quality. I know when I look at the commercial skip summary from my Tablo I see QOS as the biggest reason for failed attempts. You pose the question what is different between Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It might be that your signal may have been weaker on Tuesday. Maybe there were squirrels having sex on your antenna, again.
You will be happy – or not – that my recording of the most entertaining (some amazing catches!) first USFL (2022 try) game had excellent commercial skip. Only a few instances of missing a commercial or two.
The fact that your LED has gone off to LED heaven, or that other place, MIGHT be a clue. It has never been clear to be why there is an LED. I assume just to be able to know that the unit is consuming electricity. Other DVR devices use the idiot light to give the victim clues about what is going on, like red for recordings in progress. One would ASSUME the LED itself has not failed so it MIGHT indicate that there is a power or other infrastructure like issue in your unit. This MIGHT be contributing to having less than great recording quality but that is a HUGE SWAG on my part.
Same here, Jeopardy used to be solid as a rock with commercial skip. For about a month I too get this massage “Program doesn’t meet the criteria for commercial skip”
If I cancel recording and reset the Tablo, then reschedule Jeopardy it does commercial skip the next time it shows. After that it goes back to the message “Program doesn’t meet the criteria for commercial skip”!
I agree we need to know what’s triggering this so it can be fixed. This is a Tablo issue, not Jeopardy.
I apologize. I left off a key word when I referred to the commercial skip statistics. I wrote Table when I meant to write Tablo Tools. Tablo Tools a free utility that provides some very nice statistics and features for the Table. It can be downloaded here.
Well I can confirm that a brand new Tablo, that has a working LED, DOES NOT resolve this issue. So I’m now certain this wasn’t specific to my device. I’ve been running a brand new Tablo for a week now, and the issue seems to be worse than before. Every episode of Jeopardy this week has this issue.
I also have an HDHomerun and Plex server running and I started recording Jeopardy on that platform. Seems to work perfectly there.
Sadly I may switch if the Tablo doesn’t get streaming going on the ATSC 3.0(Tablo HDMI) version although I think they will. In my opinion the only other thing Tablo is missing that Homerun has is Plex integration. I’d really like that option which Tablo had a long time ago but stopped supporting.
I didn’t know Tablo used to integrate with Plex. If they did that again, I would be very happy as the HDHomerun itself is kinda clunky. But once you get the DVR up and running at least it seems to be working just fine.
@gce The setup for and the software provided by HD are clunky. They are not nearly as refined as Tablo. However, once you get the device setup and running, you add it to Plex and really never have to deal with the HD software again. Plex is better than the HD software and on par with Tablo. Its different so there is a learning curve but nothing too challenging.
Plex overall has very similar behavior for every part, Movies, TV Shows, Live TV, and DVR. So once you master it you’ve got them all covered.
That was a long time ago before I got my Tablo. You can still at least run one of the 3rd party apps to automatically import recordings into Plex. Unfortunately I don’t know of any way to make Plex run commercial skip detection on the imported recordings. One other thing that Tablo has over Homerun + Plex is “nondestructive” commercial skip. That’s actually a nice feature I haven’t seen anywhere else. When an area is marked as a commercial by mistake you can still manually rewind to watch it.
