Feature suggestion - Multi-skip

[dervari]

Here's a suggestion...

If you enter a number, followed by the skip forward, have Sage skip forward that many skips. For example, you hit "6 skip", have it skip forward 60 seconds (assuming your FF skip time is set to the default 10 seconds).

[dkardatzke]

Good idea, but the only problem is that when you are watching Live TV and you hit 6 first, it will start to change the channel to six.

But, that is an option in the Guide to jump forward that number of days if you haven't already tried it.

[sshapiro63]

How about Shift-6, Alt-6 or Ctrl-6 ?

[dervari]

I'm talking about basically commercial advance. :) I've used the days feature many times.

It could be made so that changing channels requires a three digit sequence. Most people would only skip forward 3-4 minutes to avoid commercials. With the skip set to 30 seconds, that would be 8<skip>. Even at 10 seconds, it would only be 24<skip>. IIRC, channel changes for my lineup already require 3 digits. Hit one or two and it's ignored. If it's the same all the time, just have it look for a skip after one or two digits. If no skip, ignore. :)

[Mark Lamutt]

Better idea than forcing 3 digit channel changes on everyone would be to give us multiple skip commands that are configurable in the UI. :) They wouldn't even have to show up on the screen as an icon - just make them remote or keyboard configurable. Best of both worlds. :D

With the hipix, I have something like 7 or so available, although I only use 2 forward settings and 1 back one.

[justme]

I like Mark's idea. I have a Tivo and use the "30 second hack". So nice to skip ahead 30 seconds at the push of a button. The best part is since the skip back is only 10 seconds, you can use the two in conjuction to jump commericials and get to almost the very beginning of the show after commercial break. I only see about 6 seconds of commercials on average per break. I often use Zoom player on my PC to accomplish the same thing.

It would be great to have the capability of user defined duration multi skip for both forwards and backwards right in SageTV.

[dkardatzke]

Originally posted by justme
It would be great to have the capability of user defined duration multi skip for both forwards and backwards right in SageTV.

You can specify in the .properties file the settings for skip forward/back. Find the lines with rew or ff and the setting is in milliseconds. Just make sure Sage isn't running when you make the changes. We are going to try to work these settings into the application directly for the future.

There is also the "Time Scroll" feature of SageTV which is set by default to 2 1/2 minutes. To use hit "Time Scroll" then FF/Rew and then Time Scroll to jump to that point. You can also change this time setting to something you find more convenient.

Multple speeds for ff/rew is on the list for the future but nothing planned yet.

[Mark Lamutt]

Jeff, how about putting the skip forward and skip back time options somewhere in Detailed Setup so the properties file doesn't have to be edited to change it?

[dervari]

I used the 30 sec skip on my Replay TV until I bought one with commercial advance built in. Talk about convenience! :)