TiVo to Charge for Automatic Commercial Skipping in Your Own Recordings
TiVo to charge money for skipping commercials in your own recordings
TiVo is ending free automatic commercial skipping for its DVR customers starting November 2, 2026. The company will replace the popular SkipMode feature with a paid add-on called Premium Auto Commercial Skip, which will be offered as a 30-day free trial before requiring a monthly fee. Manual skipping via the 30-second skip button or fast-forward will remain free. This move reflects TiVo parent Xperi's shift away from DVR hardware toward smart-TV software and advertising tech, forcing longtime users to decide if the convenience is worth an extra charge.
Making the most convenient version of that feature an optional paid add-on represents a notable change in the company’s relationship with its remaining DVR customers.
- hliyan
I argued this in 2015:
> "...why I believe you will not escape ads by paying for your content: people who can afford to pay for content are people with money, or people with buying power, in other words, the exact same people advertisers look to target. The more buying power you demonstrate, the more advertisers will target you. So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in..."
- flowrange
Here in France, some Internet+television providers have started implementing a new rule : you can't skip commercials on recorded shows.
It was entirely dictated by TV channels, in order to close the obvious "recording loophole" : instead of watching the show in their VOD app, you could record it, and obviously skip all commercials.
Now you can't anymore. There's even a small dialog when you try that tells you that "Due to a specific demand by <TV Channel>, skipping is a disabled feature."
- OroPla
I couldn't imagine engaging with any form of media where the possibility of being exposed to an ad exists. I haven't seen an ad in over 20 years now and I can't go back.
Only watch Blu-rays and when I do Youtube, I do it through yt-dlp. If there are ads, I'm out. I just can't physically handle this assault on my mind. It's too much.
- ProllyInfamous
The most surprising thing here is that Tivo is still a company.
I knew the Tivo employee that coded the GUI button for "play a random recorded episode" (circa 2010). He/Nate left there ~2012, when it seemed to be on its last gasps of relevency.
An unrelated-shoutout to all us "Papered Trees," from waybackwhen... boy did we watch some recorded television, stoned.
- V99
My parents still have a couple, but I think most people's reaction to this is "TiVo still exists?" CableCARDs are going extinct and there are lots of other options to record OTA these days.
- pjc50
I wonder how long technical protection measures will last in the era when everyone has an AI with a spectacular reverse-engineering capability. See the current MIDI piano thread.
At the very basic level you can have the AI spot when ads are playing and mute them for you. Used to be easily done with loudness and various other in-band signals.
- walrus01
Once again PLEASE DRINK A VERIFICATION CAN (note this is from 2013, and while its origin is as a shitpost, it's prophetic)
- theage
If you can get your recording to play in the browser my TivySkip Web Extension[0][1] will skip broadcast commercials for free. I use Jellyfin's web portal to playback my recordings adfree but the ext will actually work on any site playing live TV with various jump around and visual block/mute schemes to choose from.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tivyskip/