Um, after the 1AM reset, 2AM EST, All the shows that had the auto hop are now back to normal on PTAT and none of the shows from Thursday night had the auto hop added....Did they get stopped by the networks already?
Auto Hop Explained
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Seriously? The wife was blasting through it. I was sitting there playing on the internet and she watched the 1 hour show in like 10 minutes. American Idol is heavy 30 second bump show! This.................<bump 30>.......is American Idol!!
I agree. We usually get thru it pretty quickly, expecially the results show. Last night we watched the performance night and I turned on auto hop just to see it work. It did great to get me to the beginning of the show and then at the first break I let it go and again it did great. At the second break though we walked out of the room and when we came back it said our show had ended. I stopped the playback and then restarted it without auto hop and was able to continue watching the rest of the show. I guess auto hop needs a little work still.
Mine did not do that at all - it "hopped" over all the breaks perfectly. I made sure to watch just to check and it there were no problems.
Same here, I was not sure what to expect during the "hopps" but it worked out great!
Why the decision to only offer this for PTAT? I Hope E* is eventually going to turn this feature on for any/all of our DVR'd recordings...
I doubt this will be added to any other channels or recordings since they most likely have a deal with ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC for recording PTAT in the first place and getting more people to watch them. Plus it will cause an uproar with the advertising department at most networks.
I'm curious to see if any other TV providers will respond..
Isn't the commercial skip a patented feature? If I get some spare time later, I'll search the USPTO for the specifics of how it identifies the commercial start/end points. Anyone else, feel free to beat me to it! uspto.gov 
PTAT with the ad hop is pretty sweet.
PTAT with the ad hop is pretty sweet.
There's no deal with AutoHop. Dish has come out and said they believe what they are doing has solid legal footing. That's what Dish claims anyways. I'm sure they claimed the same thing with Tivo as well and lost (just to put some perspective).
These broadcast networks make most of their money from advertising, so the whole thing is very interesting and controversial.
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Found some possible references to Funai having patents to do this, as well as Microsoft.Isn't the commercial skip a patented feature? If I get some spare time later, I'll search the USPTO for the specifics of how it identifies the commercial start/end points. Anyone else, feel free to beat me to it! uspto.gov
There's no deal needed to record 4 channels for 3 hours. Anyone could do that with a quad tuner card or multiple tuners. I used to do it all the time with other QAM channels
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I'm very curious to know how this works and am pretty sure there are not markers in the stream. I was able to tour a TV station a few times and met the guy who inserts the local commercials. He literally sat there and flipped a switch and logged the fact that they were inserted as promised. I recall being very surprised that it wasn't automated.
I suspect it is either a program that scans the stream looking for the blank spots and determines which parts are commercials (the way Replay, MythTV, and Windows Media Center do it) or it is done manually. Or it could be a hybrid, where a program does most of it and a human just validates the data.
Either way, I think the 1am availability is based more on avoiding a suit then a technical reason.
I suspect it is either a program that scans the stream looking for the blank spots and determines which parts are commercials (the way Replay, MythTV, and Windows Media Center do it) or it is done manually. Or it could be a hybrid, where a program does most of it and a human just validates the data.
Either way, I think the 1am availability is based more on avoiding a suit then a technical reason.
This functionality has existed for a while in the HTPC space. Search for ComSkip or Show Ananlyzer to get an overview of how it works. Basically they look at many characteristics of the feed such as volume levels, station identifiers, blanking , etc to make the determination. I used this for years with SageTV and loved it. Giving up that functionalit was the hardest part of dropping SageTV to start using Dish and Hopper.
Customers will love it just as much as the networks will hate it. I see a lawsuit. It will be like those you-know-what blu-ray discs that won't let you skip the previews!!
