Selective settings for commercial detection

Here in the UK, we have some channels that do not have commercials. Principally, those run by the BBC.

It would be good to be able to tell Channels DVR not to bother detecting commercials for recordings from particular TV channels to be defined by the user. It would save a lot of processing time and needless use of energy searching for non-existent commercials.

While not quite what you are looking for, you can selectively choose to turn commercial detection on/off per series. Not quite per channel, but it is a step closer.

I made a similar request here but I don't think they understand it:

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Yeah, I think far better to be able to just set some channels to be excluded from commercial detection.

It would be a real chore to do it on a per show, or per pass setting. For example, you might have some passes that record across different channels, some which have commercials and some not. An obvious example would be major sporting events such as the football World Cup is typically split across ITV and BBC.

Ps, feel free to vote for the feature too.

Just to add that comskip is definitely tuned for US-style ad breaks. I've tried tweaking it to work better for UK channels but I've never quite got it to a point where I'm happy with it. That said, I still tend to leave it on for BBC channels/series because it's still fairly good at cutting the beginning of a recording (I always set my recordings to start 1 minute early).

That would be great for PBS.

How do I turn off detection for a series?

Depending upon where you want to do it:

  • Web UI: Recordings > Shows > All > Series Title > :gear: > Detect Commercials
  • Apple client: Library > TV Shows > Series Title > … > Show Options > Commercials

Shouldn't there be something to set under "Manage Series Pass"?

I use Windows and FireStick.

That dialog is quite rudimentary, and hasn't been updated since additional options were added.

The best options for advanced management of your DVR is to use the administrative interface on the DVR, not the client apps.

Not sure if this changed since this post, but I found the option using my Android web browser then selecting Library > TV Shows > more > (select a show) > Show Options tab > Detect Commercials.
It seems as though the Detect commercials setting is on my default but of course it won't actually do so unless your enable Detect Commercials from the main Settings page.
Now I can turn the Detect Commercials off for individual shows such as sports. So I don't get spoilers displayed in the timeline.
On that note, does anyone know if it's possible to hide the little color differences in the timeline to hide the spoilers of when Commercials are approaching soon?

Not that I’m aware of. Interesting, I never considered a commercial in the timeline to be a spoiler. I guess it can make sense in some cases.

Yeah, it's really you can tell when the game ends in the timeline when the commercials suddenly bunch up more often. Really bad for overtime games that are sudden death