Tivo Tip: 30-Second Commercial Skip Tivo Hack Doesn’t Work?

One of the most widely known Tivo secrets isn’t really a secret. It’s basically a way for Tivo – the company – to technically stay out of hot water with the major networks because they aren’t selling a device that really skips commercials “out of the box”.

Although everyone knows that you can skip commercials with Tivo, the 30-second skip feature isn’t anywhere in the Tivo manuals or FAQ’s — hence the “hack” that everyone uses and loves. And ages ago, you found the neat hack, programmed it and have been happily skipping around programs with ease for as long as you know.  The fact that the Tivo didn’t come pre-programmed like this doesn’t even enter your mind until you find the button not working at all…

More often than you necessary though, there are times when you have to re-program the Tivo for the 30-second skip feature due to power failure, Tivo software upgrade or rebooting.

So you race to the web and Google “30 second Tivo hack” to get the correct sequence of buttons to press to program your remote and…viola!

RATS!  IT DIDN’T WORK?

You try again…and….drum roll please…IT DIDN’T WORK AGAIN?  What happened?  Has Tivo disabled this feature?  Are you batteries in the remote weak or dead?

NOPE.

Here’s a very often overlooked part of the instructions when programming the 30-second ad skipping feature: You MUST be currently PLAYING a pre-recorded program while entering the SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT sequence – otherwise, you get zilch, nada, nutin’ honey.