Skipping TV commercials when recording

Skipping commercials on Windows 7 Media Center is a pretty complex thing to set up. And it is not FREE.

Advantages of Automatic Commercial Skipping:

• Save time - The average hour long show has 17 minutes of commercials.
• Save energy - No need to reach for the remote control when commercials come on.
• Peace and quiet - Those super loud commercials get skipped before they have a chance to wake up the entire family.

Dragon Global ShowAnalyzer ($29.98 for a one-year license) is a Windows application that allows to skip ads. Basically it "watches" the show for you, only really, really fast. While it is watching the show it tries to divide the recording into blocks. Later it uses characteristics of those blocks to try to determine which blocks are commercials and which blocks are part of the show. ShowAnalyzer processes the show and creates files that identify the location of the commercials. The data is then available for use by whatever program you use to watch or edit the show. The truth is that accurately detecting commercials is hard and the networks are constantly trying to make it harder.