DVR With Automatic Commercial Skip

I hate commercials...especially the repetative ones on my favorite shows like Law & Order and the Jon Stewart show. I've spent a long time customizing my DVR, but I've finally got it to automatically skipp any and all commercials on my favorite shows. So now its time I share my work with the rest of the world so anyone can enjoy tv without annoyances.

I got a nice barebone computer system from (~500 bucks) Newegg.com and used that, but you can use almost any computer. I do recommend that you have at least 512MB of RAM, a 1.5Ghz or higher CPU, and a decent video card. My system is running an AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU with 512MB or PC266 DDR RAM. I also recommend that you beef your system up with a large hard drive since 1 hour of recorded TV can be up to 1-2GB in size depending on your quality settings.

For a detailed list of components please checkout my website at http://www.geneomatic.com.

Proceed by installing Windows XP. You can use XP Home or Professional, it generally doesn't matter. If you're using XP home, here is an article on how to enable most of XP Pro's capabilities in XP Home:

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/howto-change-windows-xp-home-to-windows-xp-pro-105486.php

Once all your hardware is installed properly and you've updated windows with all security patches, you're ready to download and install SageTV from:

http://www.sage.tv/download.html

You can download a 15 day trial to make sure it'll work out for you before you buy.

The SageTV Installation is very simple and straightforward. Simply click through the installation wizard, leaving all options set to default until the installation has completed.

For more detailed installation instructions please see my website at http://www.geneomatic.com

After the SageTV installation has completed, you'll need to complete the initial configuration before you can start using the software. The initial SageTV configuration is relatively straightforward, but requires about 10-15 mintues to complete.

For detalied screenshots of each step in the initial installation, please checkout my website at http://www.geneomatic.com

Download the comskip_playback_import.stvi from the following website:

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=12194

Place the file in your C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3 directory of your SageTV installation. Then restart SageTV and navigate to Setup->Detailed Setup->Advanced->Import SageTV Application Package (.STVi File). Choose the file you placed into the directory and import it.

These 2 utilities will help you monitor your video directory for new TV recordings and automatically launch the ShowAnalyzer program to detect commercials in the newly added video mpg files.

Both utilities are available from:

http://www.dragonglobal.org

Install both utilties and configure them as shown on my website: http://www.geneomatic.com/wordpress/?p=66

That's it. Sit back and watch commercial FREE TV!