In the 90's I had a Panasonic VCR that would automatically skipped commercials. It worked by detecting what broadcast engineers call "superblack," which is what goes over the air between recordings (say, between a TV show segment and the commercial start, then again at the end of the commercial break). It's a black generated from a lack of signal. Regular "black" like black recorded on tape is less black if you look at it on an oscilloscope, but not detectable to the average eye.
It was a great piece of technology, but had interesting social effects. After a year or so I noticed that I didn't get many of the jokes that people talked about around the water cooler at work. I was unfamiliar with certain catch phrases. I had to ask someone, "What's a macarena?"
In decades past, TV commercials were part of the collective knowledge, and a socializing factor. Think of Coca-Cola's numerous iconic ads. Or Apple's "1984." Today, with so many people streaming shows and skipping commercials on their DVRs, I wonder if that's contributing to the social fragmentation of American society.