[mythtv-users] commercial flagging idea - commercial "fingerprinting"

[Meatwad]

> On Apr 11, 2005 2:24 PM, *Matt* <skd5aner at gmail.com 
> <mailto:skd5aner at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hello All, =D
> 
>     Sorry this is long:  For the short version, just read the first two
>     paragraphs.
> 
>       I had an idea a few months ago, and just thought I'd throw it out
>     there.  I think that mythcommflag is getting better and better.
>     However, sometimes there are times it'll goof up, and some shows are
>     notroriously harder than others to flag correctly by their unique
>     filmographic nature(Lost, Law & Order, CSI, etc...).
> 
>     How about a method where users can validate mythcommflag's results and
>     make that info available to the myth community to strengthen the
>     accuracy of commercial flagging by using verified data.

In a perfect world, all of the commercial breaks would all happen at the 
same time. Everywhere.

In reality, they do not. Every master cable headend follows a local 
origination commercial insertion schedule sent daily by their traffic 
and billing department. LO comercials are notoriously inconsistent when 
they start and stop as they are cued by tones from the satellites and 
last until the T&B schedule *thinks* they should end. Furthermore, LO 
commercials are stored and played back from either 1/2" or 3/4 VTR decks 
(old-n-busted) or by digital insertion systems (new-hotness). In either 
case, the tapes are remastered to the cableco's preferred format or 
encoded on commercial MPEG-2 gear and stored on VOD servers built for 
this purpose (e.g. SeaChange). This process would require every 
underpaid tech at every headend to get it right every single time. They 
don't.

D*TV and Dish subscibers have it somewhat better but inconsistencies 
still occur.

IIRC, this has been discussed here before in greater detail with a good 
number of pro's and con's.

--
Meatwad

[1] Who am I kidding? A perect world would have no commercials at all.