[mythtv] Test (crude) patch for commercial skipping

[Doug Zobel]

Chris Pinkham said:
>> <snip>Talks about his experience with Tivo commercial skipping</snip>
>
> I'd have liked to seen these comments. :)
>

Since you asked....  Actually he did have some good points in there that I
shouldn't have snipped out:

<dave's comments>
I have ReplayTV and I think it's looking for evenly-spaced black screens
and/or evenly spaced silent audio.  It's about 80-90% accurate in skipping
the breaks, but certain types of shows will confuse it.  Law and Order, for
example, often dips to black and has those graphics telling the time & place
as part of the show.  If the segments between those dips are short enough,
it will skip them.  I turn off the auto-skipping when we watch L&O now.

Any spot longer than 60 seconds will cause the replay to NOT skip the
commercial, because it thinks it's part of the show.  I've also seen it skip
mid-program for no apparent reason at all.  Some networks and local stations
have little or no black between their spots, which makes it difficult for
Replay to detect them as being spots.

Given the wide variety of both program styles and commercial styles, it's
difficult to design a system that will work absolutely 100% of the time.  I
can tell you with reasonable certainty, however, that there is no special
signal (audio or video) in this country that "gives away" commercial
content.
</dave's comments>