A comparison of Commercial Skip capability in MythTV vs Comskip
This is a very limited test of the accuracy of MythTV’s (MythBuntu 14.04) commercial skip compared to Comskip 0.93i.000 (Linux), using three different Comskip profiles: ABC, Multi, and the default comskip.ini provided in the comskip source code package.
| Movie | Actual Commercials | Default comskip.ini | ABC comskip.ini | Multi comskip.ini | MythTV default behavior |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nutty Professor (LAFF) | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| Tribulation (TBN) | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Omega Force (TBN) | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| The Shaggy Dog (LAFF) | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 |
Notes:
- MythTV detected commercials in Omega Force in the middle of the movie, even though there were none in the middle. This means the viewer would miss up to several minutes of the movie. MythTV also failed to detect one of the commercials in Nutty Professor – this is the typical problem I find in MythTV Hallmark recordings, where commercials are missed after the first half of the movie. This is the problem that drove me to perform this comparison.
- The ABC comskip profile is likewise a little loose at detection – missing one commercial, and falsely detecting one in Shaggy Dog (meaning missed movie content for the viewer).
- The Multi comskip profile did detect one more commercial in Tribulation than actually existed, but it was actually a portion of a larger non-movie segment TBN broadcast after Tribulation ended, so the content was validly “not part of the movie”. In the end, the Multi profile came closest to matching the actual commercial content in all movies.