An eagle-eyed TiVo Community Forum member caught a TiVo employee’s Facebook post that has revealed automated commercial skip will soon be available (pictured below). And, after reviewing with a source, I can confirm TiVo’s existing SkipMode will be expanded to include an “Auto Skip” option.
Once upgraded, DVR owners may be prompted to enable automatic TiVo commercial break skippage during recording playback and the feature can be toggled within the settings (pictured above). As to actual viewing mechanics, when TiVo detects an ad, a small “skip in progress” icon appears accompanied by a chime, followed by the video jump. Unlike the fully programmatic approach Channels and Tablo comskip capabilities will bring to customers later this year, TiVo’s solution remains human curated (at least partially) and thus a smaller subset of programming will be tagged (pictured at bottom) – think prime time on the major networks… which is, fortunately, a favorable scenario for cord cutters.
It’s also expected that TiVo’s big spring update will continue to refine and walk back portions of the much debated Hydra interface, including streamlining My Shows for more efficient perusal. The RC8 that’s rolling out now is merely a patch to the previously deployed Winter update, while the much more significant Spring software upgrade, with AutoSkip, is a bit further out.