Mitsubishi and Toshiba were the last two companies in Japan that were still selling and manufacturing for the Japanese market Ad-skipping recorders. Found on most high-end Blu-Ray recorders on TV for Toshiba and in Mitsubishi Real LCD TV, this feature helped people to record shows without Ads.
But after heavy pressure from Japanese TV companies and broadcasters Toshiba and Mitsubishi were literally muscle out of this game and forced to remove such features on their products.
While until today such Ad-skipping system where not fully accurate on regular analogue broadcasting, the move from July 24 to a total digitalization of terrestrial TV will make Ad-skipping features will completely wipeout ads with a 100% accuracy. In Japan Digital TV programs and commercial does not use the same digital signals making it extremely easy for any one to remove ads at will.