Just reading the headline looks like they weren’t sued because they’re skipping commercials but because they infringed on patents. Hopefully Channels didn’t infringe anything.
Here're the patents referred to by the judgement linked in the article I shared:
The claims seem ridiculously broad and generic: Any playback system that can (1) set markers relative to the program timeline (2) detect when the playback cursor falls between two markers and (3) does some kind of pre-defined filtering specific to that section (skipping over the content is among the filter examples they mention).
Likely if there were a legal issue, I believe the solution would be to remove the Comskip from being "embedded" and create an option to incorporate 3rd party software (ie command line options similar to what can be found on Jellyfin or Emby) and allow the end user to integrate that way. I'm not a legal expert, but I believe that puts the burden on the end user vs. Channels (assuming that the command line can be used for multiple reasons and not merely to incorporate the comskip solution solely). My .02 worth anyway.
TiVo's are installed in a just a handful of places, and they've had a commercial skip feature for years. ReplayTV got in trouble for enabling the commercial skip to occur automatically without any user intervention (imagine how nice that was for some of us parents with very small children!).
I believe that as long as human interaction is required for things such as fast-forwarding and skipping, having a button act as a "commercial skip" falls under that category.
But I'm not a lawyer...
Disabling Auto skip might have to be done in the future ... Plex completely Removes the Commercials wonder how they will also address this.
Bah. Some point, some one will try sue to make any sort of physical skip forward button illegal on a remote control. Crazy companies threw a fit back in the day when VCRs came out, omg, it has a fast forward option!!!
Oops - I disabled that setting long ago and completely forgot about it.
Auto skip only works if the commercials were detected right. And with Channels, that is a big hit or miss. Either is it perfect, or way off.
Many programs, it is perfect, but several it just sucks at.
Recording on OTA channels mainly is the worst. CBS, NBC, FOX, etc.
Shows like Family Guy, and SWAT, the commercial skip will mark the final 2 min segment of the show as commercial and skip it, and then bam, you now watching the Evening news. It also fails to clip out some comercials,. as those ones have the channel logo back on.
I made Changes to my INI to keep the last 5 minutes of a show and min_commercialbreak=45... So my OTA Channels are well detected so I use autoskip.
verbose=10
detect_method=123 ;; everything but scenechange
punish_no_logo=0
cc_correct_type_modifier=1
length_nonstrict_modifier=1.5 ;; required before below due to comskip.ini parsing bug
combined_length_nonstrict_modifier=1
min_show_segment_length=222
min_commercialbreak=45
use_existing_logo_file=0
logo_fraction=0.39
delete_logo_file=1
output_vdr=1
output_edl=1
output_ffmeta=1
output_ffsplit=1
always_keep_last_seconds=300
always_keep_first_seconds=60
thread_count=1
No idea how to edit that. They do not have a option to do so in the server GUI.
I can not even get SSH access to work, (Pi image) tried the "Guide" they have, but still get auth error.
Get permission error trying to access anything other than recording files via SMB.
It not a big enough annoyance for me to try an mess with it again, it only those few shows/networks, and they only air once a week sporadically.
I just use the GUI option to edit the commercials after comskip has finished running. It's usually only a little bit off and takes about 30 seconds per show to do it.
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