iSponsorBlockTV v2: SponsorBlock for TVs and game consoles

[danShumway]

Sponsorblock has been a Godsend for me; it's something you don't really think about but adds up. The sponsored segments are not even really the biggest advantage, it also skips intros and outros and interaction reminders, which are huge.

I am convinced that being really aggressive about blocking advertisements helps with my ADHD and helps me focus better. I don't have science to back that up, just my anecdotal self-reported experience -- but I see improvements every time I get a little bit more purposeful about blocking ads (and not just ads but intros, boot screens, social reminders, suggested articles, etc -- basically interruptions). And when I see ads now that I'm no longer desensitized to them, they stick out so much and they're so hard to ignore. Our brains are good at filtering things out, but I do wonder if there's a focus cost in addition to a time cost. My mood improves when my house is clean and organized; my mood also improves when my media consumption is organized and de-cluttered.

[ornornor]

> interaction reminders

I’ve been wondering about these… do people really need to be reminded to “subscribe like comment down below” in every single video?

Don’t people know the creator wants you to do it and only do it if they feel like anyway?

What’s the point of everyone saying it in every single video?

It’s just aggravating to me, but I wonder why they keep saying it?

[nextlevelwizard]

Long intros are the worst. You had a nice click bait title and thumbnail fucking get to the content instead of telling me how busy you have been and how you feel/sound sick or entire history of everything and everyone even remotely related to the topic if the video.

Just give me the meat and give it to me raw

[geek_at]

I use sponsor block on youtube too (I have youtube premium but that does not remove these sponsor blocks automatically) and the only videos I'm kinda sad not to see the sponsor blocks are videos by "Internet Historian".

He does it funny enough not to be annoying. Worst example on the other hand is Linus Tech Tips in my opinion

[tpmx]

Youtube recently emailed me to say that they are cancelling the Youtube Premium Lite plan (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649777) that I've been on for 3 years.

This looks interesting.

[precommunicator]

This is to skip in-video sponsorships/ads (based on community tagging them as such), not YouTube ads.

[munk-a]

Yea, they recently doubled the price of their ad-free version so back we go to ublock and sponsor block.

[benhurmarcel]

That’s a shame, I was waiting for this plan to be available in my country to get it.

[sergiotapia]

Sponsorblock is one of the best things I have ever used in the last 5 years.

"You've saved people from 1,927 segments ( 16h 56.3 minutes of their lives )

You've skipped 5,500 segments ( 1d 9h 19.3 minutes )"

Absolutely ridiculous how much filler youtube is filled with to hit the 10 minute marks! I hope they never go down, it's a great free service.

On mobile phones we use vanced, on my nvidia shields we use smarttubenext. Both integrate with sponsorblock automatically.

[satvikpendem]

You should use ReVanced, Vanced is a dead project. Luckily, ReVanced also has SponsorBlock support.

[ct0]

shields smarttube beta is one of the best things ever https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

[tech234a]

The database is available for download from several mirrors [1] [2].

[1]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/database

[2]: https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror

[bisby]

You prompted me to go through the FreeTube settings. SponsorBlock is just right there. I didn't even think to look for it. Amazing! Thanks.

I wonder how many of the open source clients have it built in.

[ajsnigrutin]

On the other hand, youtube is trying hard to stop adblock use in general on browsers.. down to the level of having to update ublock lists hourly, get popup mssages, and playlists stopping playback after three videos.

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtu...

[pests]

After disabling my adblock for YT I noticed the video player has gotten much worse. I always saw preroll ads still but now all of them are completely jarring. My previous player seemed to play them inline whereas now they load separately, jump abruptly, much more annoying.

[xnx]

I'm a YouTube (Red? Premium?) subscription so I don't see ads, but I'm very pleased to see SponsorBlock-like services spreading. Would love to see it for podcasts.

[nickthegreek]

This can block the in video ads you do see with YT Premium.

[hedora]

Overcast (iOS) supposedly can block ads and skip intros/outros. I haven’t tried using those features though.

It also blocks some audience-measuring redirects.

[jrmg]

For some reason I feel a lot worse about the idea of automatically skipping sponsor sections of YouTube videos than I do about blocking web ads.

[danShumway]

Note that you can configure Sponsorblock not to skip sponsored segments but to still skip intros/outros and subscription/interaction reminders.

Adblocking is definitely the thing it's advertised on, but sponsored segments are only one labeled category. For longer lets-plays it's great to have the equivalent of Netflix's "skip the intro/credits" option. It is an adblocking extension first and foremost, but I still kind of recommend checking it out even if you don't plan to block ads with it because you might still find the other categories useful.

[munk-a]

I don't - the creator already got paid... and if it devalues ads to the point of sponsors no longer trying to inject marketing into videos and creators relying on patreon/similar I think we'd be in a better world.

[sureglymop]

I don't. If the video is streamed to my machine I get to filter it before I consume it. Youtubers make money from merch sales, donations, subscriptions, live events and more. If I want to support someone I find out how to donate to them but I don't feel bad about filtering out ad reads.

[antmldr]

Yeah, sponsor sections of content is usually done respectfully of the audience. There's no javascript being run on my machine, the sponsor is usually tangentially related to the content, and the creator has an incentive to deliver it in either a humorous or relevant manner.

[AlexandrB]

There's only so many times I need to hear about Ridge wallet, Surfshark, Manscaped, and Raid: Shadow Legends.

[callalex]

Yea, they aren’t stalking you everywhere you go, and they don’t install malware on your device.

[kcb]

I already pay for Youtube Premium which pays the creator in return for ad-free viewing. I don't really see a difference between ads from youtube's platform vs ones embedded in the video content.

[dmunozv04]

It skips sponsor segments using the SponsorBlock API and can also skip/mute YouTube ads. Devices don't need to be on the same lan to work

[jimaek]

Just installed and it works amazingly well.

I have YT premium and now this removed all the annoying integrated ads as well.

[dmunozv04]

That’s great to hear

[Moldoteck]

This is a godsend for my yt premium subscription. Now I can really enjoy watching yt on my tv without watching ads since I pay anyway, will test this weekend. Big thanks to developers!

[nihonium]

I don't understand how can people trust a random app or extension just to have a little convinience. When it comes to big tech people are very privacy conscious. But it's not always big tech may have privacy leaks or would sell your data directly to data brokers most of the time, it's small apps like this.

I'm not saying developer is doing that, but they have power to do so. This app sends every video you're watching to their api, https://sponsor.ajay.app/api/ , and they can do whatever they want with this data. When small apps like this becames popular, they start receiving offers from data brokers/malware business and sometimes developers sell the data or the whole app without even knowing that the data will be used for bad purposes.

[dc3k]

> But it's not always big tech may have privacy leaks or would sell your data directly to data brokers most of the time, it's small apps like this.

Do you have any data to back this up

[peoplearepeople]

What mechanism does it use to block the ads?

[DavideNL]

> "Basically this is casting with some bonus features. If you are playing on a Screen (a tv or console) then Remotes (usually your phone) can automatically notice it and automatically show what is playing, let you use controls, add stuff to the playlist etc. This program registers a remote and automatically skips forward when a sponsorblock segment is present. "

Thank you for the explanation @jabroni_salad : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37873749#37876128

[bazmattaz]

Hey dmunozv04, would this work on a old Raspberry Pi 3? I'm getting the following error and I'm thinking it might not be supported;

> docker: no matching manifest for linux/arm/v6 in the manifest list entries.

Would it work on a raspberry 4 maybe or even a raspberry 5?

If not any of the above, is there a low power mini-pc type option that you recommend?

Thanks

[hedora]

Does youtube pass information about which parts of videos are skipped back to the people that uploaded them?

(Wondering if this directly affects sponsorship revenue.)

[mkmk]

Now if only you could do the same thing for other streaming apps. I’ve tried some dns blocking but it tends to just mess things up.

[whatsthatabout]

Wow this works great! Just took 5 minutes to set up. Is now up and running on my docker vm so it‘s always working.

[Bad_CRC]

I use https://github.com/gabe565/CastSponsorSkip that is the same and its great, it also mutes the ads while waiting to be skipped.

[loufe]

Does this impede connecting to the TV/console with another device simultaneously?

[dmunozv04]

I just tested it and it works just fine. YouTube seems to support multiple “mobile” devices connected to a single TV/console

[dave_walko]

love this, now to find a guide how to set it up on my synology

[WhiteOwlLion]

seems like a good project to integration with ChatGPT video and figure out ways to automatically insert start & end times for sponsors, interaction reminders, intro, outro, etc. With a little training, this could be fully automated accurately.