One of the most important tools a Home Theater PC brings to the home is commercial skipping. Not just the 30-second skip, but a true, detection of commercials with the ability to skip those commercials with a press of the button or even automatically if you choose. Not surprisingly, Windows 7 is barely "born" yet, and until last week didn't have a way to skip commercials automatically... until now.
Those of you using the Windows 7 beta for your MediaCenter goodness are in luck. Thanks to Show Analyzer and DVRMSToolbox, commercials recorded by Windows 7 Media Center can be automatically detected and skipped. It's a very early release and likely to have some bugs but well worth giving a shot if you're a Windows 7 Media Center user. The Show Analyzer software detects the commercials and the DVRMSToolBox makes it all work for you behind the scenes so you can use Media Center and not worry about those commercials.
What You Need To Know for Windows 7 Commercial Skipping:
- First Read up about how it all works at theDigitalMediaZone
- Next you'll need the latest beta of ShowAnalyzer NOTE: Not available to the public yet, but should be soon
- Finally, you'll need the "early access version" of DVRMSToolBox which requires a donation of cash or other contribution to the HTPC community - read more here about how to get early access
If you use SageTV or BeyondTV or one of the many other HTPC software programs and want to know how to get commercial skipping working with your Home Theater PC setup check out this article.
