*** Starting July 19th 2022, Automatic Commercial Skip will no longer be offered on NEWLY ACTIVATED Tablo DVRs ***
If you had cable or satellite TV before you cut the cord, you may remember occasional free trials of ‘premium’ channels outside of your basic package. For the next two weeks, we’re doing something similar. Until September 29th 2020, Tablo OTA DVR customers can try our awesome Automatic Commercial Skip feature that lets you enjoy most DVR recordings without annoying ads, absolutely free!
Try Automatic Commercial Skip Again – For Free!
Starting now until September 29th, all Tablo DVR users with an active TV Guide Data Service subscription can enjoy free access to Tablo’s Premium Service which enables the Automatic Commercial Skip feature.
Since launching this feature we’ve made significant improvements including adding Automatic Commercial Skip to mobile and web-based apps, the ability to enjoy local and national newscasts without ads and have boosted the overall accuracy of commercial detection.
During this free trial period, you can try this feature again without having to fork over any cash.
NOTE – Tablo customers with active paid Premium Service subscriptions are unaffected by this free trial and can continue to enjoy Automatic Commercial Skip as usual.
How to Enable the Automatic Commercial Skip Free Trial:
Since free access to Tablo’s Premium Service has been enabled for all users with active TV Guide Data Service subscriptions, it’s easy to get started.
Here’s how:
- Go to the SETTINGS screen of a compatible Tablo app
- Under SUBSCRIPTION, verify that your access to the Premium Service subscription is ACTIVE, if not hit REFRESH to activate
- Under GENERAL, set Commercial Skip Detection to ON
Commercial Skip Detection should already be ON for those who tried it previously
All new eligible recordings will then be uploaded for Automatic Commercial Skip processing.
NOTE – Those with upload speeds slower than 1Mbps or very low data caps should not enable this feature. Automatic Commercial Skip uses 100-200 MB/hour of recording in external internet bandwidth and can overwhelm the upload links of slow networks.
How Do I Know If It’s Working?
About an hour after new eligible recordings have completed, Tablo apps on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV will show either a success or failure message within the recording details.
You can also check RECORDINGS > RECENT and look for those with a yellow checkmark which denotes the recording has been sucecssfully processed. 
Web and mobile apps can play back recordings using the skip playlist, but don’t have success/failure messages.
When you play recordings, sections where commercials have been detected will be highlighted in yellow in the scrubber bar. Those yellow sections will be skipped automatically during playback, so there’s no need to pick up your remote!
If the sections are grey, this means you’ve temporarily disabled automatic skipping in the player itself, but you can easily turn it back on.
What Happens After the Free Trial Ends?
If you’d like to continue to enjoy this ACS feature after free Premium Service access ends, simply log into your Tablo account at account.tablotv.com and add Premium Service to your Tablo.
Pricing is as follows:
- On a MONTHLY TV Guide Service plan?
Pay an additional $2.00 USD ($3.00 CAD) per month - On an ANNUAL TV Guide Service plan?
Pay an additional $20.00 USD ($30.00 CAD) per year
If you choose not to subscribe to Premium Service, access to the feature including skips on previously processed recordings will be disabled.
Learn More About Automatic Commercial Skip:
The Automatic Commercial Skip feature page has tons of information about how it works, supported apps, frequently asked questions and more but here’s a quick list of things you should know:
- This feature works best when you have a strong Over-the-Air TV signal from your antenna
- Most of the completed recordings are eligible to be uploaded for Commercial Skip processing
- Manual recordings, those from already commercial-free networks like PBS and some older programs like Bonanza are currently ineligible for processing
You can also check out help articles on our Knowledge Base that will walk you through troubleshooting and common error messages.
We hope you enjoy this free two-week trial!
Still have questions about how the feature works, pricing, or anything else? Don’t hesitate to touch base with us via Facebook, Twitter, or email.
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