A Secret Code You'll Love

We all hate commercials, and thanks to digital video recorders we can skip them one-by-one. Therefore, companies like Royal Philips Electronics are working on technology that would prevent us from fast-forwarding through commercials. The technology may never make it to our DVRs, but to appease advertisers, TiVo launched Product Watch a year ago to give consumers the option to watch mini-infomercials if they want. I still prefer to ignore any form of television advertisement, and skip commercials as fast as I can.

Lucky for me, I found this old TiVo hack that works even better. Apparently, there are a number of secret Select-Play-Select codes that let you modify a few things on TiVo. One of these codes, turns on the 30 second skip mode, which lets you skip through TiVo programming in 30-second intervals. Translation: you can skip through entire commercials at the push of a button. Pretty nifty.

Here's how you do it:

1. Watch a recorded show
2. On your TiVo remote, press "Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select"
3. Now press the advance button ( ->|) to skip 30-seconds at a time

Zatz Not Funny has a list of other TiVo hacks (for non-hackers) including how to expand storage, transfer video to TiVo and stream music. Just keep in mind that some hacks could void your warranty, terminate your service contract with TiVo or even damage your precious DVR, so be careful out there.

Related:
Commercials and DVRs
Missed a Show? Here's What to Do