Replacing blank commercial break

My office TV setup is Channels via TVE sources only. I love how elegantly it ties everything together with minimal hardware. However I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with this screen.
:slight_smile:

It seems odd to me that the network hasn’t figured out a way to monetize this block with some kind of advertising (local or otherwise,) but that’s kinda besides the point. As a DVR user for 20 years, I don’t usually enjoy or expect commercials; I’ve gotten used to skipping them when actively watching any time-shifted content. And of course, Channels takes it to the next level by automatically skipping, which I love!

But when we’re working during the day we leave like to leave live TV on in the background, listening passively, usually to the news, in the rooms next to the kitchen. And now every time these blank commercials play, someone wonders “is the TV still on?” This is just sort of a strange conundrum that got me thinking.

It would be cool if we could set up Channels to play audio, like an mp3 file, playlist or stream of our choosing if it detected an extended period of silence.

Yes I realize this will probably be considered a crazy idea. “It’s called brain storming, not brain drizzling!”

Happy Sunday, y’all :slight_smile:

CNN is one of the few networks that permanently displays a placeholder graphic. (HLN does, too, and CNNI just shows a black/blank screen, which is quite jarring.)

What other networks do (and is most often visible on ViacomCBS and Discovery network streams) is they air the national commercials as normal, but the spots where local affiliates/cable operators would insert local ads get the placeholder graphic.

Unfortunately, those screens are inserted by the network, and part of the original source stream. Therefore, Channels will treat those sections just like any other live stream. To modify this, they would need to run live commercial detection on every TVE stream it receives. (And that most likely won't be very effective. If you've ever recorded from CNN, you'll note that comskip does not flag those commercial breaks. Since it doesn't do it during offline processing, it's far less likely it'll be able to detect those as commercials with its inferior live processing.)

That makes sense and is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But would there be anything technical (or legal) standing in the way of code that could simply detect an extended period of silence? And then play placeholder audio instead during its duration?

Or how about a setting it setup that constantly plays “background audio” which automatically pauses when Channels content with audio is invoked, and automatically resumes when Channels content stops?

Theoretical questions of course. All of this is probably not worth the effort, since this only applies to a handful of channels. Is anyone else even bothered by this? I suppose a black screen (as you mentioned with CNNI) would be pretty jarring indeed. But my hunch tells me that in the coming years CNNGo and the others will figure out a way to monetize those blocks with actual commercials (local or otherwise) and then this “problem” won’t be quite the same anymore.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

That seems technically easier than determining its a commercial break. It might get enabled at times that was not ideal like during a movie where there was a time of silence. Imagine a climax scene and you can hear a pin drop with anticipation, and Jason Aldean kicks in with Cleaning This Gun!

I agree that its odd that no one has found a way to monetize it. We subscribed to MLB.tv for years and same thing... and in that case they have a LOT of streams going and should have at least been able to just play MLB ads or something. As annoying as commercials can be, its more annoying to have the jarring silence. Last night I was watching a movie with a friend and it felt very awkward that it was so quiet in those breaks.