# Skip to time - can it be done?



## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

Apart from dual record, there are only two things I really miss about my old Sky+ box.

Both are related and pretty straightforward.

On Sky+ you were able to either enter a time during the recording at which you wanted to start playback, and the resume from last watched position lasted indefinitely.

On Tivo I have to forward through the prog to the point I want - bit of a bummer today when I left my parents at the end of the Grand Prix, then had to sit at home forwarding 2 1/2 hours of telly so I could see the interviews. Also, the resume playback function seems to be lost after only a few hours.

Anybody know a way around either?

TIA.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Yeah. There's no "skip to time" function. Could be useful I suppose. You know you can skip to the next white marker very easily, don't you? 

Not sure about the loss of 'resume playback'. Under what circumstances exactly? I don't think I've ever had a problem with it


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

Why do I have a nasty feeling that the 30 second commercial skip has replaced the skip to white bar function? If that is the case, I suppose the 30 second skip is appreciably more useful on a day to day basis than the white bar skip...

As for the resume - basically always....

Just stopped watching a prog, for now I get the resume playback option, but if I go back tomorrow (for instance) it will certainly be gone, will have to start watching again from the beginning...


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

boringgit said:


> had to sit at home forwarding 2 1/2 hours of telly so I could see the interviews. Also, the resume playback function seems to be lost after only a few hours.
> 
> Anybody know a way around either?
> 
> TIA.


Resume should not be lost.

When FFing, the skip button jumps 15 mins at a time so it should have just been a few presses to get there.


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

Oh, fair enough - that's pretty easy to live with 

Ta.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:



> When FFing, the skip button jumps 15 mins at a time so it should have just been a few presses to get there.


Or the skip period increases to 30 minutes for longer recordings over 3 hours such as the whole of the live coverage of a Grand Prix.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Not that it helps much but I wanted to verify that your last known position should not be lost.


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## steela (May 12, 2004)

If you're watching a program and then press Standby on the Tivo remote, then it'll not remember the resume point and start again from the beginning.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

What is the purpose of the standby mode? The tivo continues to record live tv buffer and scheduled shows. In the six years I've had my tivo it has been "powered" constantly.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Standby will turn your tv off it you have setup your remote...
It will also release the scart control, so your tv will auto-switch to the other scart or tv tuner.
Suggestions will be recorded immediately in standby instead of waiting 30minutes with no keypresses...

As for the OP, for the interviews, isn't it quicker to use skip-to-end 
(press the skip button in play mode, not ff)
then rewind the 5-10 mins from the end...

The skip-to-time feature on other PVRs has always been an admission of a poor FF/skip system IMO 

[edit]
I did write a hack a year later to do skip-to-time as mentioned in this thread
skip2time


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## JudyB (Jan 25, 2006)

mikerr said:


> As for the OP, for the interviews, isn't it quicker to use skip-to-end
> (press the skip button in play mode, not ff)
> then rewind the 5-10 mins from the end...


Only if you haven't reprogrammed that for the 30 second skip. In an ideal universe I would like to be able to do both, but most of the time the 30 second skip is so much more useful that it wins hands-down.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

JudyB said:


> Only if you haven't reprogrammed that for the 30 second skip. In an ideal universe I would like to be able to do both, but most of the time the 30 second skip is so much more useful that it wins hands-down.


I find in my universe that skip to end, skip to start and skip 15 minutes is much more useful than 30 second skip as I skip the ads of several minutes duration with the triple speed fast forward option.

Still this only goes to show how different we all are as individuals and how each of us has different priorities in what we like the most.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

If you're watching 'live TV' and pause then after 30 minutes (or less if you're watching on time delay already) then the programme point will be lost even if the current programme was being recorded at that time. You can also find that when you come back to Tivo it's paused at the beginning of the next scheduled recording which can be a bit confusing.

If you enter the programme from "Now Playing" then your position is kept indefinitely.

Personally I've always found the higher speed fast forwards with skip back more useful than multiple 30 second skips. It doesn't take long before you get the timing just right to drop back in at the beginning of the next programme section.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

AMc said:


> If you're watching 'live TV' and pause then after 30 minutes (or less if you're watching on time delay already) then the programme point will be lost even if the current programme was being recorded at that time.


30 minutes is the standard live buffer size.
You can increase this to 3 hours if your tivo is networked (bufferhack).

I've often thought tivo should always record the current programme as a suggestion for this very reason 
- you pause live-tv and end up away longer than 30 minutes (albeit longer with bufferhack), and you've lost the programme.

Maybe I'll get around to writing that as a hack one day.


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## cyril (Sep 5, 2001)

mikerr said:


> 30 minutes is the standard live buffer size.
> You can increase this to 3 hours if your tivo is networked (bufferhack).
> 
> I've often thought tivo should always record the current programme as a suggestion for this very reason
> ...


ReplayTV has the best buffering solution - it buffers everything as long as there's spare disk space left.

So you could have a 24 hour buffer if the space is available.

TiVo should also not lose the buffer on a channel change.


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I find in my universe that skip to end, skip to start and skip 15 minutes is much more useful than 30 second skip as I skip the ads of several minutes duration with the triple speed fast forward option.


I'm with Pete on this one.

Unless you want to find a particular ad, I can't see the point of the 30 second skip.

Like Pete, come the adverts, I hit the FF button 3 times;
as soon as I see the programme again, I hit the FF button again, which returns the playback to normal speed, with the patented Tivo jumpback that invariably finds the bumper between ads and prog. :up:


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

ericd121 said:


> ... with the patented Tivo jumpback that invariably finds the bumper between ads and prog. :up:


Jump-back? Pah! Some of us don't need it


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ericd121 said:


> I'm with Pete on this one.


   :up:



> Unless you want to find a particular ad, I can't see the point of the 30 second skip.


To me to be useful the 30 second things would need to be a 2 minute or 3 minute advert skip and this would need to be as well as and not instead of jump to start, jump to end and jump by 15 minutes. The Enter and Clear buttons on a Tivo remote don't seem to do much most of the time so ought to be able to be programmed to also have this function. In fact I notice that it is stated to be the "Enter/Jump" button.



> Like Pete, come the adverts, I hit the FF button 3 times; as soon as I see the programme again, I hit the FF button again, which returns the playback to normal speed, with the patented Tivo jumpback that invariably finds the bumper between ads and prog. :up:


Nice to know that we agree on some things. 

At this rate we may yet even find a Tivoweb theme that both of us have the same positive appreciation of.


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

steela said:


> If you're watching a program and then press Standby on the Tivo remote, then it'll not remember the resume point and start again from the beginning.


Perhaps this was my problem.....

Just switched back to Neve Mind The Buzzcocks at exactly the same point I stopped watching it yesterday when I made my post....

Sure I can't have pressed standby every time, but perhaps....


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> I find in my universe that skip to end, skip to start and skip 15 minutes is much more useful than 30 second skip as I skip the ads of several minutes duration with the triple speed fast forward option.
> 
> Still this only goes to show how different we all are as individuals and how each of us has different priorities in what we like the most.


Differences indeed; the lack of a 30 seconds skip is the most irritating thing about Sky + (nd there are a few). I find it much easier to go through the ad break with six (usually) rapid presses of the skip button than FFing. You have to concentrate too hard when FFing - in fact a recent ad survey showed that people who FFed through ads actually had better recall of which ads were shown than those who watched at normal speed, becaus ethey were watching so intensely.


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## geekspeak (Oct 1, 2002)

boringgit said:


> Perhaps this was my problem.....
> 
> Just switched back to Neve Mind The Buzzcocks at exactly the same point I stopped watching it yesterday when I made my post....
> 
> Sure I can't have pressed standby every time, but perhaps....


There is an issue that has been discussed in the past and confirmed by several users that it does sometimes forget the resume. It is not restricted to pressing standby. Had it myself fairly frequently over the years.

Don't think that anyone ever tracked down the circumstances, although someone did suggest a specific routinue of buttons to press to try and avoid it. (not sure how successful it was!)


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## Wonk (Jan 22, 2006)

Dimly remembered advice from an old thread, the detail of which now escapes me, has had me use the left arrow on the remote to return to the Now Showing menu on the odd occasion I need to stop watching something part way through.

Since I started doing that, I can't recall any times that I couldn't resume from the previous playing position.


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## Nebulous (Nov 28, 2005)

I'm with wonk on this one. I've always instinctively gone left out of everything including playback and I don't recall the resume ever failing to remember the last position.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

mikerr said:


> Standby will turn your tv off it you have setup your remote...
> It will also release the scart control, so your tv will auto-switch to the other scart or tv tuner.
> Suggestions will be recorded immediately in standby instead of waiting 30minutes with no keypresses...
> 
> ...


Ha! My remote has a seperate power button for the TV so the first feature isn't applicable.
My tivo also has no scart connection since I am not in the UK
With these two "limitations" in mind the standby feature is relatively useless anywhere but the UK.

Not sure about the suggestions....


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> The Enter and Clear buttons on a Tivo remote don't seem to do much most of the time so ought to be able to be programmed to also have this function. In fact I notice that it is stated to be the "Enter/Jump" button.


If you choose a channel on live TV then choose another you can use the "Enter/Jump" button to flick between the current and last channel and back - hence "Jump".
In practice I never watch live TV often enough to use this feature - as external channel changing is slow, it still loses the buffer and live TV is painful to watch without the buffer.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

to those asking why TiVo has a standby, the first versions of the series 1 TiVos in the States didn't have a standby mode - the standby button on the remote only sent the TV into standby.

However, consumer surveys revealed that people din't understand why TiVo couldn't be put into standby so standby mode was added initially to allow this perception of being able to put the box into standby (i.e. turn off the green LED!) and also allow the box to start recording suggestions immediately rather than waiting for 30 minutes of inactivity.


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

My girlfriend was forever pressing the TiVo button to exit back to "now showing", and I'm not certain this retains the resume position either?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Yes, it does.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

steela said:


> If you're watching a program and then press Standby on the Tivo remote, then it'll not remember the resume point and start again from the beginning.


You have a standby button on your remote? is it called something else? I don't see it on mine. (S2 649DT)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Soapm said:


> You have a standby button on your remote? is it called something else? I don't see it on mine. (S2 649DT)


This is the Tivo UK forum.

All our Thomson Tivo S1 models have a silver remote with a Standby button on it.

Unfortunately we don't have S2 Tivos in the UK, let alone any S3 series models!


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## gyre (Nov 22, 2003)

The only thing I've found that the standby button does is increase the likelihood of my tivo crashing and rebooting 

-- gyre --


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

I should have mentioned that the US remotes don't have "standby" written on the remote - the button next to the TiVo button that does that is called something else. I don't know where my US S1 remote is at the moment so I can't find out what it's labeled as.

On the S2/S3 remote image provided for TivoWeb Plus it's marked Window, but I'm pretty certain that's not what the S1 remote is marked.


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

It's marked 'TV Pwr' on the black s1 remote.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Ashley said:


> It's marked 'TV Pwr' on the black s1 remote.


That button turns off my TV.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Well yeah. Given that it's marked as such, that's what I would expect it to do


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

The "standby" button on my Sony remote is a big round green button at the top left under a header that says ---power--- . Under the same header is a narrow button labeled TV. 















I think the Sony is the best Tivo remote design of them all with the Toshiba model a close second. I *HATE* the peanut.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

I have to say the peanut is the best remote I've ever used. It's ergonmonically near-perfect.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

I respect your opinion and cannot imagine anyone would ever say such a thing. I prefer the remote from my 13 channel TV from 1982 more than the peanut. I wish tivo didn't try to reinvent the wheel.

I could be pushed to use a peanut shaped remote if the channel/volume buttons were at the bottom instead of in the middle. 
I can honestly say it was the second biggest reason I didn't upgrade to a series 2.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

I love the peanut layout, my thumb can find all the buttons without looking down at it.
The only time I need to look at the control is when using the numbered buttons.

Why do controls need so many buttons, it should all be in the GUI.

Those other 2 controls pictured above reduced the size of the pause, play and ff buttons too much.
Why is mute nowhere near the volume controls on the sony remote ?

The record button should be near the up/down, or channel change,
as thats what you do before pressing it....

The toshiba one is awful (though more similar to 90% of all remotes)


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

ciper said:


> I respect your opinion and cannot imagine anyone would ever say such a thing. I prefer the remote from my 13 channel TV from 1982 more than the peanut. I wish tivo didn't try to reinvent the wheel.
> 
> I could be pushed to use a peanut shaped remote if the channel/volume buttons were at the bottom instead of in the middle.
> I can honestly say it was the second biggest reason I didn't upgrade to a series 2.


I guess it depends on which buttons you actually use. For me I can reach buttons I use all the time with my thumb without changing my grip, while the sape of the remote and the differening shape and size of teh buttons means i don't have to look to see what i'm doing.

The only think I'd change is to move the Clear button up to within that "don't change grip" zone.


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## Nebulous (Nov 28, 2005)

The buttons on the peanut are great, but what idiot decided to make it round on the back so it constantly rolls off the arm of my sofa?


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