Ad Skipping
From TivoZA
| Table of contents |
There are two option when it comes to ad skipping, the first option is to use the normal fast forward method and the second is by means of a backdoor code which allows you to use the "advance (->)" button to jump forward in 30-second increments. My personal preference is the fast forward option as you don't jump to far into shows but it does take a bit longer, using the 30-second skip trick definitely the quickest option.
Fast forward method
The easiest way to fast forward through ads without missing a thing is when the ads start, double click the "fast forward" button, keep your finger over the "instant replay" button and just as your program starts again (after the channel/show logo), press the "instant replay" button and you should be pretty much on target. This isn't the quickest method of skipping through ads, it may take between 5 - 10 seconds to skip the ads but its the least finger intensive and you don't end up to far into your show as you can do when using the 30-second skip or triple fast forward methods.
30-second skip
The 30-second skip method is the quickest way of skipping through ads, you can skip through ads in about 3 seconds and for this reason it is not enabled by default on the TiVo unit. There are however two ways in which you can enable this, I'll explain how in a bit. The 30-second skip method allows you to re-use your "advance (->)" button and by pressing it you jump forward 30 seconds at a time, the disadvantage is that you lose the ability to quickly jump to the end or beginning of a show which can be quite useful when a show finishes early and you want to jump to the end to delete it. The good news is you can still jump forward and backward through the bookmarks by first pressing "fast forward" and then pressing the "advance (->)" button. One of the other problems when using the 30-second skip method is you may jump to far into your show, this is simply resolved by pressing the "instant replay" button until you are back to where the ads finished.
There are two ways in which to enable the 30-second skip feature, the first way is by entering in a sequence of keys via the remote. Unfortunately this gets reset each time your TiVo reboots which is not very often, however there is a way in which to make the 30-second skip feature the default. Both methods are explained below.
Enabling/disabling the 30-second skip feature via the remote or HackMan
To enable the 30-second skip feature by remote you need to have your TiVo displaying Live TV. You can now either enable it via the "Backdoor Codes" option found on the "HackMan" menu of TiVoWeb or alternatively by entering in the codes from the remote.
If going the remote route you need to press the following combination of buttons on your remote:
Select Play Select 3 0 Select
Once done you should hear three "blings" (same sound made as when pressing the "Thumbs Up" button) and this tells you that the code has been entered successfully.
You can also disable the 30-second skip feature in the same way as you did above.
Making the 30-second skip feature permanent
If you have played around with the 30-second skip feature by using the remote method and decided you would like to make your TiVo default to this option after each reboot then below is how you would do it.
The below method is superseded by the fact that HackMan (http://web.nlis.net/~davehill/hackman/hackman.html) now provides this functionality, for details on how to install HackMan (http://web.nlis.net/~davehill/hackman/hackman.html) to your TivoZA setup, see here (http://tivoza.nanfo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=49#210).
Alternate (non HackMan) method:
Note following the below instructions may result in your TiVo not booting up, if this does happen your 'tivoapp' file has become corrupted and you can just copy the backup over it but this will require you mount the TiVo hard drive in your PC.
First thing you need to do is download and unzip the file, then FTP it across to our TiVo. You can download the file from here (http://tivoza.nanfo.com/downloads/skip30.zip) (credit goes to MuscleNerd (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=129269&page=5#3), who wrote the patch). Once downloaded you need to unzip the file.
Before ftping the file across you need to put your TiVo in read/write mode, so from the TiVo telnet prompt type:
rw
Using an FTP application or your browser you can now copy the skip30 file to the '/tvbin' directory on your TiVo. You will then apply the patch to 'tivoapp' but before we do that we need to make a backup, from the telnet prompt type:
switcherstart -k (Wait for command prompt to return, this may take as long as 10 minutes) cp /tvbin/tivoapp /tvbin/tivoapp.bak chmod +x /tvbin/skip30 /tvbin/skip30
You now need to put your TiVo back into read only mode as well as reboot it, type:
ro reboot
All done, your TiVo should now default to having the 30-second skip feature enabled. You can temporarily disable the feature by using the remote method above but to disable it permanently you need to copy the backup of 'tivoapp' over your patched version.
