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by Larrikin 1299 days ago
I've had thoughts of a project for making my TV smart but never got started on it.

I think developing a ML vision model for detecting commercials during sporting events or detecting YouTube ads and when the skip ads button appears would be a fun and not too complicated project.

But connecting it to hardware with an infrared remote seemed significantly harder and this project confirms my worry.

It might still be possible in software with a software Roku remote, I briefly looked into what it takes to write apps on there and was able to control my Roku over WiFi. But would be nice to not have to depend on it.
2 comments
_joel 1299 days ago
There's already tooling to do this, back when MythTV in 2005ish (iirc).

Also, this for Youtube. It's enabled on StreamNextTube and works a charm https://sponsor.ajay.app/

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jiayo 1299 days ago
MythTV commercial skipping was absolutely magical. I understand at a high level how they did it; there are lots of obvious heuristics you can use for this (black detection, silence detection, observing the CBS logo/bug going away, etc.) I also find it fascinating that this was never described as "AI" back in the day; today it would 100% be.
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beepscore 1299 days ago
Neat project! I used Python Dejavu to recognize audio from a library of known commercials. A more general commercial detector via a ML model would be great!

When a commercial is detected, the program sends a http request to a local server running on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi has an infrared remote control transmitter, and uses LIRC to send commands to a Polk sound bar.

https://beepscore.com/website/2019/04/21/automatically-detec...

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