How to Remove Commercials from Windows Media Center TV Shows

[This is an article I wrote for the February's Windows Vista magazine and its now available online, they
have kindly allowed me to reproduce it here. This is designed for Windows Vista and will not work with Windows 7]

The great thing about using Windows Media Center to watch TV is you don’t have to watch the averts, the 30 seconds skip button is ideal for whizzing past those annoying adverts but where Windows Media Center really shines is with the power of the PC developers can create application to extend the functionality of Media Center. One of my favourite applications is one that can automatically cut out adverts from recorded TV shows, you don’t even have to pick up the remote. The application is called Lifextender and it scans through your recorded TV collection one at a time removes all the adverts from each TV show. It uses some clever detection software to work out when an advert break has starts and finishes and then cuts that section and creates a new TV file without and adverts in it. Once Lifextender is setup it will do all this in the background without any user input. There are a few application for Windows Media Center that will do this but Lifextender is by far the easiest to configure and get working

I like Lifextender as its very configurable but the nice thing is it will pretty much work without any setup. The first step is to download the free application from www.lifextender.com. Once the app is downloaded you can run the installer and follow the setup wizard, the application accessed via an icon in the system tray where right clicking enabled you to configure the program. The first tab enables you to set some of the general options like how often you want the application to scan for new TV shows and what you want it do to do with the original recorded. At first I had it set to remove the adverts and put a copy of the original recording (with adverts) in to a backup folder but once I was happy the application was working ok I told it to delete the original recording to reduce the amount of disk space needed . The application will also remove duplicate TV shows and remove partly recorded shows if you want it to.

There is also a Windows Media Center addin that ships with the application that will pop up a dialog box in Windows Media Center telling you a TV show has had the adverts removed and giving you the option of watching it, I found this a bit annoying so turned it off, leaving the application to run in the background

Once you have configured it the program then starts scanning your recorded TV and removing the adverts, I found it took about 10 minutes to scan each show, so initially it took some time to scan my entire collection but once it has scanned and removed the adverts from my collection it knows to only scan and remove adverts from new recordings.

Overall Lifextender is very simple to use and works great, I have no more adverts in my TV shows.

Installing

Step 1

Installing the application

Download the application from www.lifextender.com and start the setup wizard, you must accept the License Agreement, choose the install location (I would use the default location) and select Yes to run the application after install, Lifextender will then run as an icon in the system tray

Step 2

Select the basic options

Once the application is installed check the basic settings by right clicking on the applications icon in the system tray and selecting Options. The General Settings tab shows the Recorded TV folder which should have automatic selected based on your Media Center settings and also has the option for checking for new recordings. I have it set for every 30 minutes but you can have it to scan when new files are detected.

Step 3

Configure Delete or Backup the original files

After installing Lifextender I chose to have my original files backed up in case there were any problems, the program gives you three options: Delete Existing files, Recycle or Backup. The delete options removes the adverts and then deletes the original file, this saves the most disk space. The Recycle option puts the original file in the recycle bin so if you have the option of getting the file back from there if you need it. Backup copies the original file to a backup folder of your choice so if the program removes part of the show that was not an advert you always have the original file. I found that there were never any issues and I have now have the program delete the original

Step 4

Media Center Settings

You can configure Lifextender to notify you in Media Center when the application has finished removing the adverts from a show and is ready to watch, to do this go to the Media Center tab and click on Install Media Center Addin and then select “Notify me when a TV show has finished uncommercializing “. I found this was a little annoying as it was scanning my entire collection but it could be useful once the initial scanning has been performed

Step 5

Start Scanning

The application will automatically start scanning the entire Recorded TV collection and a dialog box will display its progress, you can choose to skip a TV show and Lifextender will remember not to check that file again, this is handy if you have a show recorded from a non commercial channel like the BBC and there is no need to check for adverts.

Step 6

Enable Lifextender to run after Windows startup

Due to Windows Vista security configuration you must enable the program to run after Windows has started, click on the blocked program notification bubble and select Lifextender from Run the blocked program menu

Clubhouse tags: clubhouse, media center, windows media center, how-to