How does the “commercial skip” feature work?
(From: Matt Kruckeberg (sackmans@ndak.net).) My understanding of commercial advance is that the program is monitored during recording for fade to black and silent audio between programming and commercials and between commercials. The microprocessor stores these events in memory until the recording session is over. It then analyzes these events to determine whether an event was part of a group of commercials or just a dark silent passage of programming. The tape is then rewound and the beginning and end of the commercial groups are marked with special start and end signals recorded on the control track, similar to index search marks. During playback with the feature activated the unit will automatically forward search when a start signal is detected and resume normal play when an end signal is detected. Old clunkers and the march of technology It always amuses me to listen to comments about how anything older than 6 months (or 30 minutes) should be tossed in favor of some newer, more ch
