gone through the manual...searched google and countless forums...seems one has to manually cut the ads after recording..but...i just need someone to confirm that..no..you can`t have the ads cut out while you`re actually recording on the panasonic dmr ex85...is there any such dvd recorder that has this feature ? thank you

As far as I know, there never has been a recorder of any kind or VCR that can do that. The industry makes their money from ads. Why would they ever give you a way to avoid seeing them. It would put them out of business in short order. Broadcasters will do everything in their power in not giving out a signal that can be detected by a machine that indicates an ad is coming. I am not aware of an ex85. I have a DMR-E85 and it certainly can't detect coming ads.

Dave

I have a couple of Panasonic VCR's with a feature called "Commercial Advance." When CA is enabled, after recording something the unit automatically rewinds to the starting point, then scans forward through the tape for the short "black" sections that often precede and follow commercials. Then when you play the tape back, it automatically fast-forwards through the commercials. It's kind of cool when it works, but it gets confused if any of those black sections are missing. I never bothered with it much myself because I didn't like to wait through the commercial-marking step at the end of each recording session.

It would be nice if their DVD recorders could at least add chapter marks automatically at the black sections. Then with a HDD or DVD-RAM recording it would be a quick matter to add any missing ones, or delete ones that you don't want by combining chapters.

I recall seeing an RCA DVD recorder from a year or two back that had the "commercial advance" feature. I guess it just skips right over them. A couple of reviews I remember reading said that it worked great.

As far as I know, none of their hard drive units include it, but I could be wrong there.

Didn't the early Replay TV boxes have an automatic commercial skip feature that was taken out in later models due to broadcaster protests.