Did Microsoft intentionally break commercial skipping in Media Center?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Aug 8th 2008 2:11PM
posted Aug 8th 2008 2:11PM
posted Aug 8th 2008 2:11PM
The percentage of sales people that recommend Samsung HDTVs.
Salespeople are also becoming less likely to recommend LCD sets over plasma sets, which goes against the industry trend.
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Is anyone really surprised? Heck, even Microsoft's beloved Internet Explorer v.6 will not allow a Flashblock-like convenience. Next, don't be surprised if you start seeing overlays while watching content that are inserted by M$.
I am glad I have not bought nor bootlegged Media Center.
DVRMSToolBox isnt the only thing that broke while updatiung the code. Also Webguide. Which is a good program that Microsoft picked up last for a good amount.
My webguide broke when my cable company was bought out by Comcast. The webguide program used to tell me what address I need to put in a browser to access my PC from another location, but now that I have comcast, it doesn't tell me anymore. It just lists the address for local PC's to connect. Any ideas on how to find out what the address is so that I can access my PC from anywhere?
fuzz - use dyndns, or a router that offers a dynamic dns forwarding service (I'm using the dlink 655 at the moment and it works great)
once it's set up, your router will update your ip to the site when comcast changes it, so all you ever have to know is: thefuzz53.dyndns.org:4337 (or whatever port you have pointing to webguide)
thanks khidr! I'll give that a shot. It took me a while how to setup the static IP and port forwarding when I first started, but I figured it out. This doesn't sound that difficult to setup, but I still hate networking.
I really miss being able to have Met's day games streaming in the corner of my screen while I'm at work. Maybe once I get this working again I finally figure out how to get webguide to work on my phone, (Verizon LG Voyager) I could never get any of the streaming to work on my phone.
Well that's the last straw. Meedios, I'm coming back to your always accommodating arms.
I think you are jumping the gun on this one. It is simply a new format that no one reconizes not even their own movie editor. We are talking about a version that isn't really publicly even announced yet (until cedia). I think support will come nothing support DVR-MS out of the gate it took time to get programs to work with it.
Actually I should've been more clear in my post, it isn't WTV that breaks com skip feature of DVRMSToolBox, it is the SDK, that doesn't let the skip part work anymore.
So then there is still hope for dvrms_toolbox removing the commercials as well as lifeware. Since these are done outside of the media center interface automatically. Just will take programs like Showanalyzer or commercial skip to get time to reconize and play the format.
Well it's already possible, if you follow the read link, that is what it tells you how to do.
True but I think showanalyzer or commercial skip will reconize the new format eventually. Unless the format is protected in the way cable card recordings are which I highly doubt. To me just as long as I can get the commercials out wether but commercial "skipping" or just deleting the commercial in a whole automatically I am good.
Now the question for me and you Ben. I have heard to get the new un copyprotected cable card shows it won't require the tv pack but just the new upcoming firmware from ATI. If that is the case I will not add tv pack for a while. If not then I can't skip my cable card recordings anyhow so no loss.
To me the way the tuners work now is so much better I can live without the commercial skip. I just love having one channel 10 with all the various sources, it makes it so much easier to get around scheduling conflicts. And besides, it's not like I can't hit the skip button.
Agreed. That's exactly why I'm keeping TV Pack installed.
So, do we know if the TV Pack leak is the same one that went to the OEMs? Or is it some different version that went to beta testers? Or are they one and the same?
What is the point of a DVR if you can't skip the commercials? I haven't used the vista media center, but can you really not skip commercials with it?
You can still use the 30 second skip button, but with previous versions there were add-ins that would skip them automatically.
I imagine Lifextender would still work if you want to permanently remove the commercials from the dvr-ms files since it just cuts them out. I've had great luck with it with only a few instances of cutting out the wrong stuff, plus it just recycles the originals just in case.
@MI
You can still skip commercials by pushing the Skip button several times, but these changes break the automatical commercial skipping apps that have been developed.
@Plucky
Babgvant seems to be moving to Sage (just like I am) so you may not see DVRMSToolbox development continue in the future wo deal with these new issues with wtv files.
can anyone confirm if Lifeextender works with the new TV Pack?
No commerical skipping features work at this time without doing the mods that Andy suggested.
I've been able to skip commercials with the skip buttons and have been doing so with Vista since March 07.