[mythtv-users] Court rules commercial-skipping in recording covered under Fair Use

[Chris Pinkham]

* On Thu Jul 25, 2013 at 06:46:22PM +0000, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Gary Buhrmaster
> > I got the impression it *is* hand marked.
> 
> btw, this is not a new idea, but it does again point out that
> a (potential) crowd-sourced solution for MythTV commercial
> flagging could be done, at least for the "networks".

The problem with this comes in with the fact that MythTV users are
getting their content from literally hundreds of sources for the
same exact TV episode/movie/etc. showing.

Dish Network broadcasts one single copy of NBC showing "Design On A
Shoestring Chef's Kitchen Budget: The One Where Rita Cooks French
Fries" in prime time and they can hand-mark it once knowing
that every single user's system can key off the same datapoint in
the stream to start the flagging/cut marks.

MythTV users have those hundreds of sources for that same recording
some of which are SD analog, some HD analog, some SD digital, some
HD digital, some re-encoded by the provider, some time delayed,
some with cable-company adverts inserted and not spot-on the marks,
etc.  and they also all use different time offsets to start
recording as well.

I think getting the system in place to distribute the flagging list
is the easy part of the problem to solve.  I think that it will
have to support having a different flagging list for different
locales/providers lists in order for it to be effective though
given the unique nature of what we do vs what Dish does with
their system.  And the different locale-based lists doesn't
handle the different ways a user can record the content.

I'm all for some form of system for distributing flagging or
cutlists, I'd happily add the capability to download the markups.

The best solution I've seen so far is to use something to key off
of in the recording to know when to flag the relative start of
the skip list.  This could work, but it doesn't handle the 20-30
unique copies of the same TV program created by provider re-encoding,
local commercials inserted at just a 1/3 or 1/2 second off, etc..

I've given this quite a bit of thought.  It's a side topic, but one option
I've toyed with over the past few years is to try to integrate with
something like the ClearPlay solution to allow people to optionally filter
what their kids watch.  http://www.clearplay.com  This is basically
the same kind of thing we're talking about except it's a bit more
complex since it supports muting, screen blanking, and fast-forwarding
commands to filter programs for younger viewers, people who'd rather
just watch a certain movie without the gratuitous 2 seconds of nudity,
etc..  This works great for DVD's since there are a limited set of
masters and hence index files you need to create.  Doing this
same kind of thing or even just commercial skip for TV content from
hundreds of sources is quite a bit harder.

--
Chris