[Milominderbinder2]

Slip is Now Better Than Skip!
The design speed for the Advance button (Slip) has doubled to the FF3 speed of 20 times normal playback speed. Again your results may vary. A 30 Second Slip is now shown in about 1.5 seconds.

Shown is the key word.

Now the HR20 Slip is a better Skip than the old TiVo Skip. The old TiVo backdoor Skip took just under a second to skip 30 seconds. But the TiVo Slip screen did not update during the Skip. You had no idea where you were. The old TiVo Slip was blind.

If you pressed TiVo's Skip 8 times to go through 4 minutes of commercials during a game, you could overshoot by 1 or 2 minutes if the break turned out to be shorter. It doesn't matter how fast you are if you don't watch where you are going.

The HR20's Slip lets you see where you are and hit Replay to come back out.

You need to have an option on your survey:
The HR20 Slip is now BETTER than the old TiVo Skip.

- Craig

 

[Milominderbinder2]

Every time I press skip on my DTivo, I get one frame of picture to look at and rarely skip more than once more than I need to. For a 120 second commercial break, "slip" would take 6 seconds, assuming 1.5 seconds per 30 seconds commercial time. I can be off two on 30 second skip, and still easily beat 6 seconds. There may be other reasons to prefer "slip", but IMO, speed is not one of them.

We are in the middle of an advertiser's revolt against DVRs. They have always hated the remote control but DVRs are beyond scary.

During the Super Bowl, the classic scene is the guys watching the game and calling out for the girls to come in when the next commerical comes on.

If we are doing a 4 minute Slip and a Miller Lite Man Law commercial comes on, we stop. The same goes for the Careerbuilder.com guy who works with a bunch of monkeys. Our favorite was when he called the girl who worked with a bunch of jackasses.

If you make someone laugh, they are more likely to buy from you. They remember you. But it takes creativity to make the viewer want to watch your commercial.

For the short term, what we will see is more variable length commercial slots. Broadcasters used to have to make commercials start and stop at constant intervals like 120 seconds. SOmetimes the affilliate would miss and you would watch dead air.

Not any more.

Metatags or flags let a network embed a marker to tell local carriers when to insert commercials and for how long. This is a key weapon because broadcasters will be varying the length of commercials making it harder to channel surf or 'bloop' during a commercial.

The new Fast Slip let's us catch them when they try to do a quick cut back out of commercial. It also let's watch a good commercial. It does not matter how fast a player is if he can't play heads-up ball.

Our old friend Skip is blind-folded.

My first prediction for 2007: By year end, TiVo will be under pressure to replace Skip with Slip.

Skippy won't be able to keep up.

- Craig

 

[Milominderbinder2]

Let me say this once more: Every time I press the "skip" on my DTivo, I see a frame. I am able to discern the difference between the program I'm watching and a commercial. Skip (on my DTivo anyway) is not blind.

TiVo's Slip freezes one frame for 30 seconds. So you can't see the next 719 frames.
- Craig

 

[Milominderbinder2]

I only watched 1 show on the HR20 last night and the 30 sec slip seemed pretty good, but it seems like the commercial breaks varied from 4- 8 commercials. Is there any rhyme or reason to when they do what?

We are in the middle of an advertiser's revolt against DVRs. Broadcasters are just starting to ramp up the use of variable length commercial slots. More of the technical details are here.

Philips took out a patent on a TV in April that requires you to watch the commercial unless you pay a fee. Click here to read about it.

The new Fast Slip let's us catch them when they try to do a quick cut back out of commercial.

Fast Slip good!

- Craig

 

[Milominderbinder2]

By the way, I am one of the minority 14 who answered NO in the poll.

Is the 0xEF improvement to 30s Slip a suitable workaround to 30s Skip?

I answered NO because the new Fast Slip is not a suitable workaround for the old Skip.

Fast Slip is the next generation upgrade replacing Skip.

Now that I understand better, please move my NO vote to a YES.

- Craig

Mr. Subliminal says: Skip bad. Slip Good!

 

[Milominderbinder2]

Doug, I don't understand the logic of removing it from the wish list. Like most here (in this thread) I prefer to use the improved slip to Tivo's skip, in fact I gave up reprogramming the Tivo remotes for the skip so always used FF.

But there are Tivo fanatics out there who do like/love the skip, if you remove it from the Wish List they will cry foul. It would be better to leave it on and let it die by dropping into low number zone.

Skip is one feature on the Wishlist that now would actually take away another feature. I wish the survey asked,
Should the new HR20 fast Slip feature be eliminated and replaced with the TiVo Skip.

In fairness, you would have to limit the poll somehow to just people who have ever actually seen the new Fast Slip. One person voting NO admitted that they do not have an HR20! I also think that for an improvement this large, you would really need to wait 90 days to let it's effect be felt.

Doug, if you keep the question, it maybe should be stated as a new question in light of the new fast Slip. The previous replies from before the Fast Slip was introduced do not apply now. Maybe retire the old item and place a new one:
Eliminate the new HR20 Fast Slip (Advance) feature and replace it with the TiVo Skip.

I think this would set a record for how low a score could go.

- Craig