I have a Hopper with Sling and we have been watching Deadliest Catch on VOD for the last couple of weeks. Started with season 1, and at first the episodes did not include commercials, and the skip forward/back worked correctly. We are now in the middle of season 5 and none of the episodes had commercials until last night. Last night we had to watch the commercials/PSA's and the skip forward was disabled. Not sure why this started in the middle of a season all of a sudden but it was much better before.
Difference in VOD behavior
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I hear you olds403. I refuse to watch Dish's iVOD when they disable FF. 
LOL, 90% of them are Covid PSA's and I am SOOOOO sick of them.
I get the concept, but it just seemed like really strange timing to start implementing it.
I agree. Unfortunately, Dish started doing the same thing to my existing DVR recordings on my Wally, as I detailed in a thread last month. So now, I refuse to use the Wally to record anything.I hear you olds403. I refuse to watch Dish's iVOD when they disable FF.
It is not really even the disabled FF that bugs me. I get that they sometimes require you to watch the commercials on VOD content. BUT, I watched 4.5 seasons (season 1 up to half way through season 5) and there were no commercials whatsoever in ANY of those episodes. The episodes would play through in their entirety. Then the next day there are commercials and no FF. Just weird.
Say what? Are you talking iVOD or linear channels too?
Have you gone back to watch episodes from the 1st 4 seasons? Maybe they're getting commercials inserted there as well.
I have not checked the earlier episodes again, I would expect it. I guess I should just see the 4.5 seasons I DID get to see without commercials as a bonus...
The irritating part is that most of them are not even real commercials, they are just PSA's (mostly covid) that no one would watch anyways and they are not selling anything. I mute them now which makes them slightly less annoying.
I detailed it in this thread: Wally U810 DVR Timers Issue
That thread started out about the inability to create new timers, but in the post linked above I also mentioned my problems with DVR functionality in general. I realize that my issues are not really related to the VOD issues being discussed here, other than the fact that my existing recordings (while I still had access to them) were acting as if they were VOD events, for some strange reason.
I tend to do the opposite whenever I am streaming a show (on Hulu for example) with forced commercials. I leave the audio on, but use it as an opportunity to rest my eyes. I listen for my show to return, and then open my eyes again.
Without going back to that thread and figuring out what you did (activating/deactivating, iVOD or linear), can you give a summary here? Did linear channels of an activated receiver suddenly develop un-skippable commercials?
Yes. In fact, all DVR functionality (pause, skip back, rewind, etc.) were disabled, on Live TV and on DVR recordings, while the Wally was activated. I did not try watching much iVOD. I just assumed it would act the same way, since I have seen it do that before. My only options (for recordings) were Play, Stop, Resume, Start Over, and Delete.
