Has anyone else noticed or been experiencing Commercial skip missing lots of commercials? I'll record shows some OTA and some TVE and it will miss commercial sections completely. It was working great before but seems to have progressively gotten worse over the last couple of months. Channels like HGTV are the worst.
All the time. its hit or miss on many channels.
but more so lately, same show, same networks i record since last season it did perfect on.
not sure what changed, the network or comskip effectiveness.
Networks routinely modify their broadcasts to make automated removal of commercials more difficult. From keeping their logo on the screen longer, to using tickers or other persistent graphics during commercial breaks, and in the case of TVE streams, those commercial break placards, there are many different factors to consider.
Commercial detection is handled by a third-party program (Comskip), and AFAIK the Channels developers don't actively work on the detection algorithms, so this is actually out of their control. You can check out the project and maybe tweak your configuration file to prioritize different heuristics used for detection, but in general you just have to accept that commercial detection is not 100% and never has been.
Exactly. Thats why I quit using comskip and use my remote to manually FF. I set my seek durations to 30 seconds forward and 7 seconds reverse. Works well for me. Years of Windows Media Center may have something to do with that. 
How does Comskip work?
Comskip reads and decodes a recorded mpeg file based on instructions Comskip reads from a so called ini file. The recording is analyzed on various characteristics such as black frames, silences and changes in aspect ratio and channel logo.
Agree it's been getting worse over the past few months.
I have a show I record once a week from a TVE channel and have Channels generate a project file for my video editor so I can remove ads and save it.
Last nights recording didn't detect a single ad.
My video editor shows zero or one black frame on transitions to and from ads.
They also do tricks with the channel bug (logo) too.
What video editor do you use?
https://www.videoredo.com/en/Products_TVSuite_V6.html
One of its developers is on this forum, @Dan203