Automatic commercial skipping is a go for Media Center in Windows 7

by Ben Drawbaugh posted Feb 9th 2009 at 6:55PM

There were plenty of people upset -- including us -- when they discovered that they could no longer automatically skip commercials after upgrading their Vista Media Center with the TV Pack. Well we're very pleased to let you know that our assertion that Microsoft broke our favorite third party application on purposed, was unfounded. You see we recently got the word from the developer behind DVRMSToolBox that the Windows 7 Media Center SDK was in hand and that it won't be long before we'll be able to can skip commercials without ever picking up the remote -- nice.

Filed under: Media PCs

Tags: 7MC, Comskip, dvrmstoolbox, show analyzer, ShowAnalyzer, TV pack, TvPack, Vista Media Center, VistaMediaCenter, VMC, Windows 7, Windows7

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Mike @ Feb 9th 2009 7:20PM

One of my upgrade roadblocks from Vista to Windows 7 is out of the way. Hopefully Lifextender will get updated. The last update was March 2008.

Neutral

IseWise @ Feb 9th 2009 7:26PM

I was looking in the DTB forums not too long ago and did see a thread that looked promising for Windows 7 support. If I remember correctly it wasnt full .wtv support has that changed?

Neutral

aaron @ Feb 9th 2009 8:53PM

come on lifextender update....

Neutral

xemumanic @ Feb 10th 2009 12:19AM

Yes, where the hell is that?
Especially now, it needs an update.

Neutral

Brad @ Feb 9th 2009 9:19PM

Oh, Hell yes!

Neutral

burndive @ Feb 9th 2009 9:39PM

Looks like my media center PC will be getting Windows 7.

Neutral

hdjunkie @ Feb 11th 2009 1:29PM

Damn, I hope we get some wtv support soon. I have a piles of recordings waiting to be cleaned.

Neutral

Peter F @ Feb 10th 2009 7:44AM

Too bad none of this works with CableCard PCs ;-(

Neutral

davevans @ Feb 10th 2009 8:34AM

How is this going to work? Since dvrms toolbox isn't actually doing the show analyzing, but instead using comskip, which doesn't support .wtv containers, how will the commercial map file be generated? On the comskip forums, they state that .wtv support is not in the works right now because they are focusing on .h264 instead. I thought essentially DVRMSToolbox was using the files generated by Comskip, then interfacing with VMC to do the actual skip. So if there isn't a commerical map, how can dvrmstoolbox know when to skip?

Neutral

davevans @ Feb 10th 2009 8:55AM

Looks like I found the answer to my own question. On the dvmsToolbox forums, they basically say you will need to convert the .wtv file to a dvrms file (using ToDvrms) and then comskip will work. Kind of sloppy, but better than nothing.

Neutral

andy vt @ Feb 10th 2009 10:34AM

MPEG may be a more reliable choice, but you need to do a little more work to get it setup.

Neutral

OneLove @ Feb 10th 2009 2:16PM

Ok, Now please fix WEBGUIDE. Please?

Neutral

Randall Lind @ Feb 10th 2009 4:21PM

skipping commercial tech is kind of useless these days due to how they screw with the length of commercials.

Neutral

Ben @ Feb 10th 2009 4:22PM

This isn't based on length, there is software that can actually tell when the commercial starts and stops.

Neutral

Brent @ Feb 11th 2009 11:01AM

Nice to see Windows 7 Media Center is catching up to where the competition (including VMC) was five-plus years ago ;)

Neutral

Ben @ Feb 11th 2009 10:57AM

Talk about being a hater, 7 isn't even out yet and you expect it to be done. ;)

Neutral

Brent @ Feb 11th 2009 11:03AM

I couldn't resist Ben. Seriously though, I'm glad to see commercial skipping making it to W7MC. If I ever have to switch to it for my HTPC that is a must-have for our house.

Neutral

woolooloo @ Feb 25th 2009 4:20PM

In my testing with Win7, the bug that prevented commercial skipping (not supporting the proper MSAS functionality) was not quite fixed. I still got the same error seen in TV Pack a high percentage of the time. I let MS know about it on the GreenButton, I hope it will be addressed before the release. But just as importantly, we have to hope that MS will document the wtv container so that comskip and SA can provide native support. Otherwise it is really kludgy to get commercial skip files generated and (near) real-time processing is impossible.

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