I'm willing to pay for consistently good content but ads of any kind are a deal breaker. For the moment I'll set aside that the quality and frequency of good content has fallen across the leading services and that current prices are no longer appropriate for the value received. My plan is to put together a dedicated media server with a high-end GPU and an input capable of recording HDMI 2.1 4k HDR10+ (at a 42Gbit data rate (FRL 48G)). I accept that this will be expensive and difficult but it's important to me. I've already acquired and tested a box capable of stripping HDCP copy protection from such an HDMI feed (because future availability is never certain).

My goal is not only skipping ads but also skipping around in program content with low latency and high responsiveness. This is because another result of the failing streaming media economic model is that content providers are "padding" the length of content they commission to cut their per-hour costs while retaining perceived value. So an 8 episode mini-series is really ~6 episodes of story stretched to fill 8 and now a two hour 'original' movie is just a bloated cut of a 95 minute tight story. Once you've paid for the actors, crew and sets, shooting longer scenes and using more coverage shots is cheap. Having a background in film and video production, it's surprisingly easy for me to spot content that's been padded and then self-edit it in real-time - although features like auto scene detection and variable speed playback (with audio pitch correction) would make it even better.

Even the better DVRs in cable/satellite boxes are too laggy and, of course, most don't provide much flexibility in skip increments and other necessary features. Media distributors are only providing DVR as a checkbox feature because they can up-charge for it but then hard-limiting its features because it hurts the other side of their business model. I don't expect the "almost acceptable" built-in DVR I have today to remain acceptable for long - because the DVR provider's incentives aren't aligned with mine. It's slowly going to keep getting nerfed, which is why a stand-alone DVR is the only viable option for the long-term. And thanks to HDCP DRM and the DMCA, the only DVRs which will give viewers what they want will be DIY hardware running open source components. My medium term plan is to train up an AI for auto-skipping commercials.