Whether i’m watching tv every night or only a couple of nights a week, i can with doubt say that one of the greatest pieces of technology i have come across in recent years is Windows Media Center. Now don’t get me wrong you may read and hear of plenty of complaints about difficulties with setting up Media Center, and i can agree with them all, it can be very difficult to get working. However, once you have it setup it is just damn awesome.
For those of you who have no idea what Media Center is, it is software that runs on your Windows PC (either XP Media Center, Vista Home Premium, or Vista Ultimate) that serves as a hub for all your media. Once it loads up you can navigate to all your videos, music, pictures, and even recorded TV. This is what makes it awesome, recording TV shows directly to your computer. It can download a tv guide every week and you can have it record shows automatically based on the tv show name. I can’t tell you how great this is when its working, i can not turn my tv on for a week and then when i do i have a weeks worth of all my favourite shows sitting there waiting for me. Obviously to experience this you need a PC connected to your computer (sometimes referred to as a Home Theatre PC or HTPC for short) or an Xbox 360 game console (which can be networked to your PC running Media Center and stream the TV).
I could go on and on about how much i love watching recorded shows rather than live TV, and fast forwarding whenever an advertisement comes on, but the purpose of this post was to explain a new piece of software that just made my tv recordings even better. So if you want more information about Media Center, jump on google and do some searching, or ask a question in the comments.
Okay, onto the subject at hand. Yesterday i discovered a software application that removes commercials from your recorded TV shows. Now i have played with some similar software in the past but it was either too manual, or just plain couldn’t find the ads to remove correctly. The software i’m speaking of is called Lifextender and from my tests so far it is fantastic.
It is extremely simple to setup, point it at the folder where your recorded TV shows are, create some rules if you wish (convert particular show titles, ignore others, etc) and then hit Scan! You also have the option to configure scans based on a schedule. Wait it out (it does take some time) and then jump on and watch your show commercial free! and oh yes it works well. I’ll admit i didn’t think it’d do much of a job or i would lose parts of my shows, but so far its been spot on (although i did only get it yesterday, so its early days).
It appears the technology it is using to find the advertisements (Comskip) is very smart:
The recording is analyzed on various characteristics such as black frames, silences and changes in aspect ratio. Based on this information Comskip segments the recording in blocks and using heuristics, together with additional information such as the presence of logo, the scene change rate, Close Captioning information and other information sources Comskip tries to determine what blocks of the recording are to be characterized as commercials.
So unless i start seeing some bad results in future, i think this is going to be a new addition to my TV watching bliss. And as the software motto goes, i’m extending my life, one commercial at a time!
