Plex DVR Now Purges Ads From Your Recorded Shows

Back when DVR first became a thing, the prospect of watching your favorite shows and fast forwarding through the commercials was indeed an exciting one. No one likes commercials, after all, which is part of the reason why services like Netflix have become so incredibly popular. Today Plex is taking that sort of DVR functionality one step further, implementing a new feature that will remove commercials from your recorded shows so you never see them in the first place.

What's more, this process is an automatic one, meaning that you only need to turn on the feature and then let it go to work for you. As detailed by Cord Cutter News, the option to remove commercials can be found in your Plex DVR settings. That setting is accompanied by a description that sheds a little more light on what it does.

In that description, Plex points out that this a CPU-intensive task, and as a result, you might see your CPU usage climb. The process of removing commercials also may take a while, but no real estimate is given. Plex says that the remove commercials option will attempt to automatically detect and remove commercials from your recording entirely, saving you from ever seeing them at all.

Plex's use of the word "attempt" suggests that maybe the software isn't as accurate as it should be when it comes to detecting commercials and removing them effectively, so maybe it's not the best idea to expect it to work perfectly out of the gate. Still, even if it does turn out to be a little rough around the edges, it's great that Plex users have access to this feature at all.

Aside from the digital antenna and tuner Plex requires, you'll also need to purchase a subscription to Plex Pass to enable DVR and, by extension, access this feature. Plex Pass costs $4.99 a month, though you can also pay $39.99 for a year or $119.99 (which is down from $149.99 for a limited time) for a lifetime subscription. This feature should be rolling out of beta today, so if you're already subscribed to Plex Pass, look for it in your Plex settings.