Is Comskip Donator Version worth it?

I record OTA (North America) shows with an HDHomerun tuner - typically just FOX, CBS, NBC, CW and ABC - in a “.ts” format with NPVR. I have tried the Comskip inside MCEBuddy and it seems to be hit or miss on cutting commercials. I prefer to cut commercials completely and not just detect - want to just have a 21 minute episode vs the typical 30 with commercials.

My question is - is the donator version of Comskip really going to help? I’ve read that it speeds things up - but can’t tell if the accuracy gets better? It just seems like my recordings sometimes get cut off or some commercial segments just don’t get removed (in the free version). Anyone have experience and suggestions if I should get donator version?

The donator version of Comskip does not make any difference to functionality. It only removes the speed restrictions and allows it to run full speed.

The detection functionality is no different and is controlled by the configuration of the Comskip INI file. Have you seen the pages on custom Comskip INI files and tuning your Comskip INI files ?

See this topic on how to tune commercial detection:

FYI starting the latest 2.4.8 BETA build MCEBuddy now includes a custom built version of Comskip which has hardware acceleration and additional fileformat support (so you can use the Skip Remuxing feature with non mpeg files).

It seems a little off to me to be customizing an open source program to remove the donator restrictions, and including it in a different program that requires donations, and no longer provides it’s source code.

No restrictions were removed. It was a stock build with some additional features added and the source has been contributed back to the original repository.

So other than supporting the comskip creator, is there any benefit now to using the donator version?