CommercialSkip

People have been hacking their TiVo recorders as long as there have been TiVo boxes. You can add more storage, enhance your networking experience, or make your TiVo remote control a bit more useful.

While some of the more advanced hacks require some technical know-how and some modifications that could potentially leave you with a dead PVR, there are plenty of beginner-level hacks. Our buddy Dave Zatz has compiled his top 5:

1. Program your TiVo remote control to add a 30-second "commercial skip" button.
2. Add an extra hard drive or replace your existing hard drive with a larger one (or pay someone to do it for you).
3. Transfer video to your TiVo box.
4. Remove the DRM from TiVoToGo programs you've moved from your TiVo to your computer.
5. Stream AAC, WMA, OGG and MP3 files to your TiVo.

Zatz's article has all the steps you need to take to perform these hacks.

A few days ago I made a brief mention of DVRMSToolbox in a post about enabling Commercial Skip in Media Center. Since then, a newer version (1.1.0.4) has been released and can be obtained from the author's blog.

If you haven't used DVRMSToolbox in the past, I would highly recommend checking it out if you run a Media Center based PC. It adds a whole new level of flexibility to the experience by giving you the ability to manipulate the DVRMS files that Media Center records to.

Yesterday Nielson released some new findings regarding how likely PVR users are to watch commercials. Well today is a new day and with that Chris Lanier has given us a quick run-through of what needs to be done to activate automatic commercial skipping in Media Center. Take that Nielson ...

The main ingredient for this tasty treat is the good old DVRMSToolbox application which can be found here. During installation there is actually an option that you can check off which tells it to automatically skip commercials. By checking this off, you will be prompted about whether you want Commercial Skip to process the show when you start to view recorded content.