>We had that in 1990's VCRs with no "AI" required. It also fast-forwarded through the commercials during recorded programs.
Yes, I owned several of those Panasonic VCRs with the "Commercial Advance™" feature. Also had a Hitachi VCR with same feature licensed from ADLE. The heuristics used a combination of detecting a fade-to-black screen transitions and higher audio levels of loud commercials. It was simplistic criteria but was "good enough".
The problem is that VCR required 2 separate passes of the VHS tape. The 1st pass was to record the video and then the VCR automatically rewound the tape and the 2nd pass played it back to itself to analyze and mark the ad segments.
That approach does not work to watch live feeds of sports broadcasts. To use the Panasonic VCR approach, one would have to "record" it first -- which defeats the purpose of watching the game live. To instantly block live ads without any waiting, you need technology with more "intelligence" or "smarts" or whatever people want to call it.
My point is that if you hype up a "live-tv-ads-skipping device" with "Unicorn Fairy Dust Technology" -- people won't complain that the company called it "unicorn whatever" -- as long as it actually works and improves their lives. It's when such a device does not work (e.g. Apple Intelligence fiasco) is when the meta analysis and lectures about such as "you know, that device doesn't actually have any horses inside of it with a horn coming out of its head".
Yes, I owned several of those Panasonic VCRs with the "Commercial Advance™" feature. Also had a Hitachi VCR with same feature licensed from ADLE. The heuristics used a combination of detecting a fade-to-black screen transitions and higher audio levels of loud commercials. It was simplistic criteria but was "good enough".
The problem is that VCR required 2 separate passes of the VHS tape. The 1st pass was to record the video and then the VCR automatically rewound the tape and the 2nd pass played it back to itself to analyze and mark the ad segments.
That approach does not work to watch live feeds of sports broadcasts. To use the Panasonic VCR approach, one would have to "record" it first -- which defeats the purpose of watching the game live. To instantly block live ads without any waiting, you need technology with more "intelligence" or "smarts" or whatever people want to call it.
My point is that if you hype up a "live-tv-ads-skipping device" with "Unicorn Fairy Dust Technology" -- people won't complain that the company called it "unicorn whatever" -- as long as it actually works and improves their lives. It's when such a device does not work (e.g. Apple Intelligence fiasco) is when the meta analysis and lectures about such as "you know, that device doesn't actually have any horses inside of it with a horn coming out of its head".