TiVo Will Start Charging Fees For Its Automatic Commercial Break-Skipping Feature 'SkipMode' (cordcuttersnews.com) 88
TiVo is notifying customers about changes to "one of its longest-standing and most popular DVR features," reports the blog Cord Cutter News:
Starting November 2, 2026, the current version of SkipMode that allows users to jump over commercial breaks with a single button press on the remote will no longer be available. The company is instead preparing to test a new paid add-on called Premium Auto Commercial Skip.
SkipMode has been a core part of the TiVo experience for years. After a supported show finished recording, the service added markers that let viewers leap from the end of one program segment directly to the start of the next, bypassing the ads in between. On newer TiVo Experience 4 devices, users could even set the feature to automatic so commercials were skipped without any remote interaction. The feature was limited to popular prime-time programming on major networks, typically appearing a short time after a show aired.
Under the new plan, that one-button and automatic functionality will disappear from the standard service. Viewers will still be able to skip commercials the traditional way by using the 30-second skip button or the fast-forward control on their remotes. Those manual methods have existed on TiVo boxes for more than two decades and do not rely on the company's commercial-detection data. In November, TiVo will offer a 30-day free trial of the new Premium Auto Commercial Skip service. After the trial ends, customers who want to keep the automatic or one-button skip capability will need to add it to their accounts for an extra monthly fee.
The company has not yet published the price.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
SkipMode has been a core part of the TiVo experience for years. After a supported show finished recording, the service added markers that let viewers leap from the end of one program segment directly to the start of the next, bypassing the ads in between. On newer TiVo Experience 4 devices, users could even set the feature to automatic so commercials were skipped without any remote interaction. The feature was limited to popular prime-time programming on major networks, typically appearing a short time after a show aired.
Under the new plan, that one-button and automatic functionality will disappear from the standard service. Viewers will still be able to skip commercials the traditional way by using the 30-second skip button or the fast-forward control on their remotes. Those manual methods have existed on TiVo boxes for more than two decades and do not rely on the company's commercial-detection data. In November, TiVo will offer a 30-day free trial of the new Premium Auto Commercial Skip service. After the trial ends, customers who want to keep the automatic or one-button skip capability will need to add it to their accounts for an extra monthly fee.
The company has not yet published the price.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something might ha (Score:5, Informative)
Theyâ(TM)re literally breaking their product and then ransoming it back to you for a monthly protection fee.
Enshitification is too kind of a word
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Wasn't this single feature half the reason you use TiVo in the first place? The other half is just being able to record the show and watch it whenever you want.
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Back when I had a TiVo, this wasn't a thing. I cut the cord back in 2006 though -- linear tv is for old people.
If you cut the cord back in 2006, you are already old -- at least in the eyes of the youth.
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If you cut the cord back in 2006, you are already old -- at least in the eyes of the youth.
I've been sending this clip [tiktok.com] to all my friends so they can feel old too.
Re: Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something mig (Score:1)
I didn't start saying that until after I turned 40, which is officially old age. And I'm going to keep saying that even if I somehow reach 120 years.
Re: Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something mig (Score:4)
Incorrect. Anyone past my current decade is old. Anyone younger than my decade is just a kid.
Re: Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something mig (Score:2)
I cut the cord shortly after I got my first batch of rentals from Netflix. I missed Survivor, 24, ER, Lost, etc. I'm old and I also did everything before it was cool. But I don't want anyone to think I'm cool because that's very much not cool.
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The best TV viewing experience is via The Pirate Bay. All shows on a single platform, released simultaneously world-wide. Universal formats that play on everything. Actual ownership of the files. The subscription price is pretty competitive too.
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It's true. It delivers exactly what users want. If only "legitimate" businesses has the same level of customer focus.
Re:Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something might (Score:5, Informative)
>"Wasn't this single feature half the reason you use TiVo in the first place?"
No. That was a feature added many years after the start of TiVo. It is not necessary, nor does it even work on half the recorded content. The skip feature is a single press to jump through the commercial section, you always have the option to just zoom through the commercials manually. I have not watched commercials for at least 35 years- first by recording painfully with VCR, then conveniently with several models of TiVo (my last/current being the Roamio).
>"The other half is just being able to record the show and watch it whenever you want."
That is one of many features (of course it is the base function of any DVR). The killer feature of TiVo is its ability to learn what you like from your recording and ratings and then
1) Accurately track and record every episode of everything you want with zero intervention. It will shift the schedule or even channel if necessary, across year after year. And do it intelligently so you don't end up with 10 of the same episode.
2) Predict other shows you might like and fill the rest of your storage with many hundreds of hours of things you might want to watch, so there is always something to watch and discover. Yet those recordings never rob space from anything you indicated are important.
And I have yet to see any cable company's DVRs do those. Probably due to patents. Doesn't matter anyway, time is ticking and the whole concept of cable TV is dissolving and I will be left with nothing but "streaming", which is still currently inferior in several ways, and not likely to improve. (And streaming on a TiVo is a mess of slow and annoying. For streaming, I use a Roku Ultra).
Re: Fine TiVo you have there. Shame something migh (Score:2)
I bought the tivo competitor, ReplayTV, but it was killed because it automatically skipped ads...or something. It was a long time ago, but it was a great device.
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yeah, I just programmed the 30 sec skip into the remote and clicked 6 times. SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT [ding ding ding] and done.
How many Tivo's are still in use? When the FCC nixed the requirement for offering CableCards, Tivo with any cable subscriber basically became a useless brick.
Tivo for OTA always seemed relatively pointless. Useful but really minimizing that 'useful'
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>When the FCC nixed the requirement for offering CableCards, Tivo with any cable subscriber basically became a useless brick."
That mandate drop was 4 years ago. Cox still supports TiVo, for now (and by "support" I mean, it works, with the cable card and tuning adapter, even though it is only 720P and all they ever want to do is try to get me to rent their brand of crappy DVR). Will this continue under Spectrum? Who knows. If not, it is at that point I will decide to try and deal with their crappy non
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Well over 4 years actually. It was done at the start of the Trump 1.0 and took effect a c
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How many Tivo's are still in use? When the FCC nixed the requirement for offering CableCards, Tivo with any cable subscriber basically became a useless brick.
TDS Telecom uses a Tivo box of some kind for their TV+ service. You can tell from because the Tivo symbol on their remotes: https://tdstelecom.com/support... [tdstelecom.com] . When visiting a relative with this, I didn't get a chance to see the actual boxes, just that they were Tivo. I was surprised to find they're running a variant of Android because to get new "channels", you have to get them from Google's play store.
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yeah that was really the market they should have pushed for. Gain the volume of cable installs while giving cable providers *something* customers actually wanted.
just utterly inept biz mgmt as so many unicorn techs tend to be
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Enshitification is too kind of a word
Indeed. I am glad I have lost interest in TV shows a long time ago. And the bits of YT I watch all get reliably ad-purged by the Vivaldi browser (other approaches exist, obviously). I have tried a bit of ad-infested YT and other online-media (new installation on a different system), and I can say I would rather go entirely without than subjecting myself to that crap.
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And, that's why I'm glad the only thing that has an active 'que' for AI is my phone... the tower and four laptops have their AI and report-back crap forcibly removed (at least until the next update), and Bixby isn't pay-to-use (my phone is a Galaxy S9) for me.
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The fundamental business model of "unlimited subscriptions" is to threaten you with a good time that can consume ALL of your precious and limited time. You can argue it's less harmful for some computer games and more harmful for drugs, especially the addictive ones. Excuse me for saying "Hell no thanks!"
In related news, "Do your own research" has become code for "With a bit of Internet doodling you can find infinite 'evidence' for any darn fool thing you want to believe." People have always tended to believ
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"Do your own research" has become code for "With a bit of Internet doodling you can find infinite 'evidence' for any darn fool thing you want to believe."
It's similarly code for, "I haven't actually done any research and neither should you; just believe me 'cause I'm saying what you want to hear."
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Eh? I thought I had already replied to this? Possibly a dupe, but:
That sounds more like the religious angle. The evangelical Bible thumpers tell you to read the Bible for yourself, but the meaning of the Bible words is actually whatever the loudest thumper says. Spent a lot of time in my youth studying this sort of thing, mostly in Houston.
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That sounds more like the religious angle. The evangelical Bible thumpers tell you to read the Bible for yourself, but the meaning of the Bible words is actually whatever the loudest thumper says. Spent a lot of time in my youth studying this sort of thing, mostly in Houston.
Yes, it never ceases to amaze how wrong most people are about what the Bible actually says - or how inconsistent it is. I saw a mention somewhere of The Skeptic's Annotated Bible [skepticsan...dbible.com], which looks interesting, though a hard copy may be more reader-friendly than the online version...
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I'd be interested if it's just excerpts of the funniest bits, but not if it's the entire thing. However not available in any of the local library systems. No surprise there.
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Welcome to the new.
Give it time, your toaster and fridge won't work without an up-to-date paid subscription to the AI Overlords.
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For a fictional example, see Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread [http].
It's not presented as an apocalyptic scenario or anything, just standard enshittification. The main character lives in a low income apartment that comes with appliances, but all of them are super cheap (or possibly make the property developers money through a kickback scheme) and require the tenants to buy foods, dishes, etc. licensed by the appliance company or to pay a subscription fee. The appliances require a server connection and when the
TIL TiVo isn't already dead (Score:3)
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Some people when they get older their brains kind of turn to mush. And they become unable to learn new things even simple things. This isn't an insult it's just a fact of reality.
But the things they learned when they were still young before the age-related cognitive decline kicked in are still there.
So you see people stuck in their ways because age has ta
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TiVo was a passible substitute for a Hulu subscription for content from the major broadcast networks, before they moved everything worth watching behind the paywall of online streaming.
These days though? I'd be surprised if there's that many people who have hardware that even still works. Mine's died twice already.
Re: TIL TiVo isn't already dead (Score:1)
When did it start in your case?
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It can't happen to anyone... it only happens to the people who are set in their ways that deep.
The TiVo thing died a while ago... now, you have streaming on your preferred platform, some paid, some not.
Recording broadcast TV died off as soon as Apple or whoever started posting new episodes online later in the night.
WTF was the last sentence in reference to?
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Recording broadcast TV died off as soon as Apple or whoever started posting new episodes online later in the night.
Where? I've never seen this for many shows.
An example: Jeopardy!. Sometimes you can find bootleg-like copies on Youtube, but they have all sorts of weird artifacts to try and fool auto-detecting software.
OTOH, recording the broadcast on my TiVo works very well.
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"people stuck in their ways"
Except there are things where Tivo is objectively superior, even when Tivo no longer makes the thing. E.g.
A remote where the more frequent operations have bigger buttons that you can find by touch.
A "Now Playing" list which is actually a list, that is ordered by recency and removes things you've watched.
Fast Forward that still shows the captioning as well as showing the video in motion rather than a still from when you started the fast forward possibly with a small window showing
Re: TIL TiVo isn't already dead (Score:1)
I actually used to work at Tivo and my first thought was Tivo is still in business?
I have a TiVo w/ lifetime, under my television set (Score:2)
It's been turned off for something like 7 years now.
I imagine, at this point, TiVo (the company) knows it's just about dead and is simply trying to milk any residual revenue it can from its dwindling user base.
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I have a TiVo HD with the lifetime subscription too. It shit itself again sometime within the last few years (the post-Covid years have all kind of blurred together). The previous time it died, it was because the hard drive had failed, so I bought a new one and reimaged it.
This time I just unplugged it and still haven't gotten around to messing with it. Pretty much the only thing I used it for was so I still had a means of recording OTA TV (which could then be transferred painfully slowly via the TiVo's
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Granted, it was nice to be able to schedule a recording, so resurrecting my TiVo is still on my to-do list if I'm ever bored enough to mess with it.
The only time I'd find that useful anymore is if I wanted to watch live sports. Pretty much everything else I'm interested in is available on demand, by one means or another.
We kept paying for cable TV several years longer than necessary. Really the only reason I've held onto the TiVo is - years ago, some channel ran most of the "The Avengers" (the old British secret agent show) episodes, and I recorded them all - fully intending to shift them off someday. Which still hasn't happened :facepalm:. But the non
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Granted, it was nice to be able to schedule a recording,
I have an OTA tuner that does that quite nicely. And seeing as how many of the upper OTA subchannels are being used to rerun some interesting programming in the middle of the night, I've got years of backlog to watch.
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I have an OTA tuner that does that quite nicely.
Which one? My TiVo is still working, but I need to start planning for the next enshitification move.
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IView 3500STB II
It's old (there are newer versions out there) and the UI is kind of funky. But it works well and has a very sensitive r.f. stage, so it pulls in lots of marginal channels.
You have to buy your own USB hard drive for the PVR function. And my old one is not networkable. But you can move the HD to another machine and copy the content over.
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The OTA subchannels usually tend to be SD resolution and heavily compressed. Even the main networks looked pretty bad compared against what's available on the high seas (usually ripped from Amazon/iTunes, if the NFOs are accurate). A lot of the issue is just MPEG 2 showing its age. That's why I've not bothered investing any money towards fancier hardware for recording OTA TV.
Textbook Enshittification (Score:5, Informative)
* Provide a service that provides a great benefit (commercial skip) to get people hooked
* Build userbase based on this benefit
* Sue other people based on "infringement" of this feature
* Sell itself to a pure patent troll (Rovi) which then renames itself Tivo
* After model of extorting other companies over patent troll portfolio is exhausted, start extorting the customer base
https://www.yahoo.com/entertai... [yahoo.com]
"Rovi has aggressively pursued licensing deals and litigation for its patent portfolio, dating back to predecessor company Gemstar-TV Guide International. Rovi says it has more than 5,000 issued or pending patents worldwide, with intellectual-property licensing representing 54% of its total 2015 revenue.
According to Rovi, its patents are licensed by eight of the top 10 U.S. TV service providers, including AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications.
On Thursday, Rovi said in an SEC filing that reached a deal with Time Warner Cable â" which is in the process of being acquired by Charter â" to extend its existing interactive program guide and patent licensing agreement. The pact, which was set to expire March 31, has been extended through Dec. 31, 2016.
Last year, Rovi suffered a rare legal defeat against Netflix, after a U.S. federal judge ruled that the five Rovi-owned patents at issue in Rovi's lawsuit against the streaming-video company were invalid.
Rovi said it has not changed its financial estimates for 2016, which anticipated possible litigation with Comcast.
Separately, Rovi has reportedly been in talks to acquire DVR maker TiVo, which also has a sizable patent portfolio and won $1.6 billion to date from intellectual-property litigation."
https://www.yahoo.com/entertai... [yahoo.com]
"t's time to say goodbye, sort of, to the company whose pioneering DVR introduced consumers to time shifting and ad skipping. Some 17 years after it went public, TiVo just became a part of Rovi with the closing of a $1.1 billion cash and stock acquisition deal they made in May â" but with the buyer now adopting the TiVo name."
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I'd just like to point out that you're quoting 10-year-old news items.
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It does seem that enshittification is timeless, at least for time measured since the start of the Internet...
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So noted. The intent was to provide sufficient context (and reference for said context) since enough time has passed that people might not know that the Tivo of today is not the same legal entity as the original Tivo.
We should be glad the original articles haven't bit-rotted into non-existence with how bad the web has gotten...
Re: Textbook Enshittification (Score:2)
10 years ago was the last time Tivo was relevant.
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2000 called (Score:2)
It want's its Tivo back.
Who still uses a Tivo? Who even still has a cable service to hook it to?
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>2000 called It want's its Tivo back. Who still uses a Tivo? Who even still has a cable service to hook it to?"
I do. It is a much, much better experience than "streaming". And I do have to pay quite a bit for cable TV service, which sucks. I expect it won't be long now before I am forced off.
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It want's its Tivo back.
Who still uses a Tivo? Who even still has a cable service to hook it to?
I've never used TiVo, but I'm still using MythTV after more than 20 years. (Anybody else here using it? ...Crickets.)
I ditched cable 15 years ago, but it works fine with an antenna. (Or, at least it will until they screw us all over with ATSC 3.0.)
They can't remove the auto-ad-skip on free open-source software, but I never used it anyway. It's not 100% reliable at detecting the ad boundaries, and it occasionally skips over part of the actual show. Instead, I just FF at 60X through the ads.
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I've been using MythTV since 2004. My MythTV DVR is a Ship-of-Theseus build, starting with 32-bit Debian and now on 64-bit Devuan, with the same database all these years.
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I do. It's still the best linear television device out there. It sucks terribly for streaming - but I don't use it to stream.
It's also one of the few devices where I can get a bit-for-bit copy of shows off of my cable stream. Their "encryption" was broken decades ago and has never been fixed. It's part of why I love them.
I have two lifetime units with three mini units in my house - two of which are still attached to functioning Slingboxes which stream to my Plex server. My parents still run a TiVo w/ l
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My cable TV service, FiOS, said they had shut down CableCards last year.
Existing CableCards seem to still work, though.
Not paying (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, I got the Email yesterday. Unfortunately, I wasn't shocked. TiVo was sold to another company and they are going to start trying to squeeze customers for more revenue as they become less relevant. But I am not going to pay extra for the feature I have had for many years. Besides, the skip function only works on less than half the content, anyway. It isn't difficult to zoom through commercials manually.
I didn't want to move to the "new experience UI" either, because it is just like all the streaming devices with their HUGE graphics and crazy navigation. The old UI is much easier, faster, and logical. Thankfully, there was an option to keep using the old UI. But I don't think the newest models allow that.
I love my TiVo, but I expect it will be my last. I don't want to use the new UI, and the cable company has ALWAYS been extremely hostile to TiVo equipment/owners. Having to use a "tuning adapter" is stupid and has caused issues over the years. And several years ago, cable-card users got banished into 720P only mode for ALL channels now. Now add Cox being just bought by Spectrum and I am guessing it will only be more hostile and expensive in the future.
And yes, I completely understand the utility and limitations of streaming services. I have a Roku Ultra. Streaming has its own problems and frustrations as well. It is not a better experience than using TiVo nor is it a drop-in replacement. Especially when it comes to finding and tracking things I want to see.
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I assume they still have - and are not charging for - the "jump ahead 10 seconds" button? (or is it 15?)
Back when I still used a TiVo, that worked pretty well for skipping commercials.
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That function should still be available/effective. I don't use it much, though.
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Reply to self. Oh, here is the actual Email:
Weâ(TM)re reaching out to let you know about an upcoming change to SkipModeâ, the functionality on your TiVo DVR that lets you automatically skip commercial breaks on select recorded TV shows.
Beginning November 2, 2026, the current version of SkipMode, using the Skip Button on your TiVo remote, will no longer be available. You will still be able to skip commercials manually using the 30-second skip (â'I) and Fast Forward (â-ïZâ-
Not enshittification, but corporate death throes (Score:2)
The real key thing here is that Tivo is already dead. They literally discontinued all DVRs I think it was earlier this year, maybe late last.
They are truly milking their last remaining subscribers for all they're worth.
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They only survived this long because they won case after case against DiSH Network accusing them of stealing their software and infringing on their patents, generating billions of dollars.
Alas, DiSH Network declared bankruptcy earlier this year.
are they going to advertise the service (Score:2)
TiVo Turns skipping Commercials Into a Ransom Note (Score:1)
TiVo has achieved the dream of every modern subscription company: take away a feature that customers already have, slap "Premium" on it, and charge them to get it back.
SkipMode wasn't some exotic cloud service. TiVo already had the infrastructure to identify commercials and let customers skip them. Now, rather than improving the product, they're deliberately degrading it and calling the restoration of that functionality an "add-on."
The 30-day free trial is especially adorable. "Here, try this feature you've
Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
Got the email a couple days ago; wasn't expecting it but I can't say I was shocked. Once they gave up on acquiring new customers (by halting hardware sales) it was I suppose inevitable that they would start trying to milk the existing customers for more money, especially the lifetime subscribers. Not me, though - as other commenters have noted the commercial skip feature only works some of the time so it's not worth paying for & nothing I'll particularly miss.
I'm still using a 15 year old TiVo Premier to record local channels after cutting the cord a couple years ago - that was the last TiVo I owned that could do OTA so I'm glad now that I hung onto it. As long as it keeps working I'll keep using it.
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Mine gave up the ghost in 2024 so I got a HDHomeRun and I run Channels [getchannels.com] on my NAS.
I was a TiVo customer starting with the Sony SVR-2000 back in 1999. It's a shame that I couldn't buy a new OTA model and continue giving them money, because I would have if they had let me.
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When TiVo unilaterally stopped supporting satellite TV is when I gave up on them. Then FiOS was deployed in my neighborhood and I kept my TiVo for several more years.
Now that CableCards are being cancelled there's no true reason to own a TiVo.
I also owned TiVos since the first models came out in 1999, including the Sony models.
Tivo still exists? (Score:2)
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>"Do a venn diagram and "TiVo owner" and "@aol.com email address" probably have a lot of overlap"
Have you actually ever used a TiVo for an extended period? Or are you just ignorantly casting aspersions?
Streaming still does not replace all that TiVo does very well, especially if you follow lots of series. I suspect most TiVo users today do stream as well and are very familiar with its up-sides and down-sides and yet still keep and use the TiVo for very valid reasons.
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When they discontinued the "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" suggestion feature years ago, TiVo just became another, more expensive, DVR to me.
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What are you talking about? Thumbs up/down has always and still works fine. That is how you rate programs.
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Nope, it doesn't work at all anymore.
TiVo discontinued Thumbs Up/Down and Suggestions in early 2023.
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>"Nope, it doesn't work at all anymore. TiVo discontinued Thumbs Up/Down and Suggestions in early 2023."
Mine records suggestions, every day.
Mine thumbs up and down work fine, every day.
According to my information, only TE4 (Edge) was affected. Mine is a Roamio. I am using TE3. So your statement isn't technically correct. Apparently they discontinued it for TE4 only. I didn't even know that (since it doesn't affect me).
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Whatever, you might seem to think it works, but it was shut down in 2023.
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>"Whatever, you might seem to think it works, but it was shut down in 2023."
Don't be an asshole. I have used TiVo for decades. I know exactly how suggestions work and use them all the time on my TE3 Roamio. You are accusing me of either being an idiot or lying, and neither is correct. I suspect you don't even know what TE3 or TE4 is. So think before you post.
Suggestions was shut down for TE4. Not for TE3.
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Every place I look and ask says all Suggestions and Thumbs Up/Down were shut down in 2023. My TiVo hasn't had it since 2023.
I guess I can believe you.
And don't call people assholes.
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>"Every place I look and ask says all Suggestions and Thumbs Up/Down were shut down in 2023."
It apparently was for TE4.
>"My TiVo hasn't had it since 2023."
Then you are probably using TE4. I am using TE3. Why it would still work with TE3 and not TE4 makes absolutely no sense to me at all. I suppose the functionality is completely local with TE3 and somehow they needlessly "cloudified" that function with TE4. I intentionally never switched to TE4 on my Roamio because I hated that user interface. Bo
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Reply to self:
>"And I guess I can believe you are using TE3"
Obvious typo, that should read "TE4"
Hostage to laziness (Score:2)
America ... (Score:1)
Auto-skip hasn't worked right in years (Score:2)
It only covered a few top network channels, and even then, it depended on some human to accurately record the start and stop time of commercial breaks. Those humans were probably trying to keep up with multiple channels at once, and it shows, they get it wrong more than they get it right.
So good luck getting me to pay for something that already didn't work.