Will You Subscribe to Commercial Skip?

Yup, use that anytime commercial skip fails for whatever reason. Most breaks seem to be 3-4 minutes. If you overshoot, just say “go back 30 seconds” or whatever.

Hate to up the ante but I’ve already stated here that I would pay $100 USD. Allowing “lifetime” subscribers the exclusive privilege of committing to 5 years’ worth of CS R&D up front in exchange for “lifetime” CS should be appealing to all sides. Nuvyyo should at least consider offering this as a trial for a limited time to gauge interest, please their premium customers and generate some cash.

Let’s stop making it sound like lifetime subscribers are “premium”. They pay less than annual and monthly subscribers over the potential lifetime of a Tablo, and I would think that a large majority of those that subscribe do have a lifetime one. It’s not really “premium” if almost everyone does it.

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Poor choice of words which I officially withdraw :+1:

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I did not sign up for the Premium Service because it took 2 hours or more before skip is available after program ended.
I also have a tivo and skip is available in less than 5 minutes after program ends. Only problem tivo does not get as many channels clearly.
i would gladly sign up if skip was available in a reasonable time.

Were those times from before, during the beta?

I ask because it sounds like things may be quicker for some people now (dependent on internet bandwidth) that fewer people are using it since it a premium service now…

Absolutely yes, the $2/month for commercial skip is easily worth it, and $20/year even more so. Commercial-skip is a super-valuable feature for me and I have tried all of them over the decades ever since VCRs could mark&skip commercials. I detest monthly fees while recognizing that $2 is the exact right price for a monthly internet-based service to not be obnoxious. I have a $2/month Motorola Multi-sensor that I may renew service for - but Tablo’s is the only monthly fee that I pay currently. It is so worth it and there was nothing deceptive about how it was tested or sold as far as I saw. It worked OK during beta and works considerably better now across all the devices, and with improved user interface.

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I did because it was a nice feature but I did not realize it uploaded the show and then sent it back - no wonder I exceeded my limit in December - I thought it was because my kid was home from college, if I have to pay because I went over my limit I will cancel, it’s a nice feature but it would cost me a lot more than $20 a year.

This was up to Feb 6 end of beta. My bandwidth is 300 so I know that is not the problem. A program that ended at 9:00 PM did not have the skip until after 11:00 PM, so you could not watch with skip until the next day unless you stayed up late, and most you could watch on HULU the next day. I have a tivo also and skip was on it within 5 minutes, but a couple of channels don’t come in as well on tivo. How much quicker is it now?
Thank you.

Great question williamgol, and thank you for providing that 2-hour datapoint that you observed. Indeed the time inbetween show-done and commercial-skip-ready is an important metric if you want to watch the show asap. Only the upstream bandwidth matters; the downstream bandwidth is irrelevant since only the commercial start/top timestamps need to be downloaded after they are computed in the cloud. Locally the biggest problem with tablo commercial-skip is zero-signal or insufficient signal quality: the repack remains incomplete has been been devastating to reception in some areas outside Boston. Reception keeps getting worse as more equipment keeps failing a mile in the air on the transmitters and atmosphere holds more water to impede signals along with the warmer temperatures.

My understanding of how it works it doesn’t actually upload the entire show and it definitely doesn’t download the entire show, it just downloads the playlist that indicates where the commercials are so the playback software on your device can skip at those points.

That’s correct.

Depending on the recording quality and audio settings of your Tablo, the commercial skip process will use between 100-200 MB/hour of recording in external internet bandwidth.

If you schedule 40 recordings in a month this will equal approximately 8 GB. It’s more than Tablo uses for regular processes but is still only a fraction of overall bandwidth for those with datacaps.

https://www.tablotv.com/automatic-commercial-skip/

Since subsribing to commercial skip I find success rate has increased substantially. I cannot say if this is due to improvements made by Tablo, or the tranmission frequency changes resulting from repack.

Prior to repack I did not see any reception issues that would have caused CS failure. But I am not sure how the algorithm works.

Also, the prior issues I had with CS not working on FOX have disappeared 100%.

Bottom Line: happy with the service so far.

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Welp, I wasn’t going to but now I just did… Now if it will retroactively do the CommSkip on the stuff I recorded while on hiatus then my $20 is even more well spent

The wording in it is…

“If you change your mind, you can subscribe to Tablo Premium Service at any time and immediately re-gain access to the feature on previously processed recordings, and new recordings will again be eligible for processing.”

Doesn’t call out it will process prior recordings that took place when you didn’t have the service, only that prior recordings that had already been processed will be available with commercial skip again.

That’s covered in the FAQs section at the bottom:

If I don’t subscribe to Tablo Premium Service right now, or let it lapse, do I need to turn Automatic Commercial Skip back on for new recordings to be processed if I re-subscribe sometime in the future?
No, you don’t need to re-enable Automatic Commercial Skip after your Premium Service subscription lapses if you had previously enabled it on your Tablo. As soon as your Premium Service subscription is active, all newly created recordings will be uploaded to the commercial skip server for processing. Recordings created during the time your Premium Service subscription was inactive will not be eligible for processing.

I’ve only had Tablo for a couple weeks now. But of all my recordings (10 or less), I think only one did the commercial skip. shrug As long as I can FF, I’m good.

I mean if it worked greatly, that’s cool. But if not, I’ll deal.

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I know I’m late to the conversation, but wanted to and my thoughts. I just marked my 1 year cord cutting anniversary. I did have the beta commercial skip feature but chose not to pay for the service for a couple reasons.

1- not reliable - would cut off beginning or end of program sections in commercial breaks and sometimes by more than a full minute. I did have the feature enabled but did not have the commercial skip do it automatically. I could see the lines at the bottom of the recording indicating commercials and could fast forward through commercials that way.

2- I cut the cord to avoid additional fees. I buy the yearly TV guide for Tablo and that is enough. First it’s commercial skip you have to pay extra for and then there will be something else after this and so on. I know you have to stay in business and make a profit and all but I refuse to start adding fees from everywhere again.

3- Soon after I activated the commercial Skip my data usage skyrocketed. I had no clue where it was coming from at first but just learned about a month ago when it was leaving beta that the commercial skip was most likely the reason for it. Apparently it uploads the programs we watch in order to find the commercials to tag them. I am only allowed so much data monthly and there was two months where we came extremely close. Now that we discontinued the commercial skip our data has dropped significantly.

Overall I am happy with Tablo, but refuse to start adding additional fees no matter how small because that’s always how it starts. If you find people will pay for it there is a chance you may want to start charging extra for other things.

Kimberly
=^…^=

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You make it seem they really “push” the Premium service. No doubt, without the basic Guide subscription, there’s less function… or more manual intervention necessary to run your tablo.
Other than the settings page, I don’t ever seen any mention suggesting I should subscribe to the Premium service (the settings page has setting for commercial skip, not advertising it).

  • :no_entry_sign: There is no charge for firmware upgrades.
  • :no_entry_sign:There is no charge for app updates.
  • :no_entry_sign:There is no charge for tech support (during conventional business hours, eastern time) They’ll even access your device remotely - no charge.
  • Nuvyyo provides a 100% repair or replacement warranty for 12 months [Tablo Warranty and Returns] and do not offer an extended warranty for a few dollars more, if you buy now.

I see a lot of other things they haven’t charged extra for - for years. You do have to pay for internet access to use your tablo, indirect fee :wink:

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Sorry, no. I used Commercial Skip when it was included. It didn’t work all the time and often eliminated or skipped over parts of the program. Not paying extra for something that doesn’t work correctly all the time.