Tivo 30 Second Skip

While watching Cranky Geeks on my Tivo, I noticed Dvorak complaining how his Tivo didn’t skip commercials like his cable DVR.  Huh?  Hasn’t he seen the tons of websites that explain how to “hack” your Tivo (e.g. BigMarv)?

Just in case you missed all the posts from long ago, if you want to skip 30 seconds on your Tivo every time you press the “Skip” button, follow these steps:

1.  Sometimes this “hack” doesn’t work unless you start off clean so it’s best to re-boot your Tivo first.

2.  Go to one of your recordings, and press “Play.”

3.  While your recording is playing, press the following sequence of buttons: Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select.

4.  You should hear 3 “bings” in a row.  Sometimes it’s hard to hear with your TV show playing in the background.  At this point, click on the “Skip” button and you should see the show skip 30 seconds.  If this doesn’t work, repeat step 3.

I have the Series 2 Tivo and this “hack” does work.  I’m not sure if it works with the Series 3 or HD versions.  One problem is, everytime the Tivo downloads new firmware and automatically re-boots, you’ll have to re-do this sequence.

One interesting side effect of this feature is that you don’t even see any part of the commercial.  This means sometimes you’ll be at the water cooler and somebody will say, “Did you see that new Coke commercial with the hot babes?” and you won’t know what the hell he’s talking about.