I think this may be referring to DVRs of the early 2000s. They used basic logic to look for a blip (dropout) in the video signal that usually happened when a co

I think this may be referring to DVRs of the early 2000s. They used basic logic to look for a blip (dropout) in the video signal that usually happened when a commercial break was inserted. It worked surprisingly well. The parallels here are uncanny, because there were tons of lawsuits from networks unhappy about this, as well as lawsuits from consumers making similar arguments as seen in this thread about how advertisements are awful and they don't have any responsibility to watch them.