[mythtv-users] commercial flagging

[Michael Lynch]

>
> No, he means the rating symbol, exactly what he's describing.  I started
> coding something to detect this one time, but never committed anything
> to SVN.  Logo Detection should not pick this up since it only occurs
> for a short period after commercial breaks, and not throughout most of
> the video like a normal logo does.  In fact, in current SVN, you'll see
> a call to CheckRatingSymbol() commented out because I never got it working
> well enough to commit.  I haven't looked at that in years though, and
> have some different ideas now, so it could be possible, but it's not
> high on my priority list right now.  The rating symbols could be detected
> using the same edge-detection logic that we use to detect a normal logo,
> just that we would only expect the rating symbol to be around for a short
> while after each commercial break.
>
>

I've had thoughts along these same lines but never really cared to
mention them because my idea mostly revolves around U.S only (I
think.)  If I understand TV ratings correctly here in the U.S. (and
more importantly how the V-Chip works) all shows have the rating
embeded in the VBI (same area as captions?) data.  If that is the
case, the kicker would be that if the commercials are not rated, they
ideally would not contain this ratings data, and thus could be easily
detected.  I've been meaning to test this on my daughters TV where I
have it set to TV-G (or something), and I want to see what happens on
a 'blocked' program during a commercial break.  If the commercials
show while the acutal program is blocked, this would lead me to
believe that the data is there to be retrieved.

This method has been discussed (not in great detail) on the dev list
here:  http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/139458?search_string=commercial%20rating;#139458

I think it sounds good, but I don't know how plausible it is.