ReplayTV was sued (and subsequently went out of business even though the suit was dismissed a few years later, meanwhile the legal fees were burdensome and the court case created wariness from consumers of ReplayTV's future) for having a feature that would actually skip commercials automatically in the recording process such that the result of viewing was as if the commercials were never recorded or a commercial free viewing experience. This is why TiVo's "skip ahead 30 second" feature had been a "hack/trick" to be programmed rather than out of the box ready, but I believe the new TiVo Premiere remotes are skip ahead 30 seconds ready out of the box.
I saw a document some years ago (possibly FCC re STB's for review) where Dish detailed how it could disable the skip ahead 30 second feature of its DVR's if it were ever compelled to do so. In fact, TiVo and Dish kept to referring to their feature as "Skip Ahead" 30 second feature with no mention of "commercials" to prevent antagonizing media companies even after they pledged to no longer file such "anti-commercial" skipping features. In fact in one video, Leslie would say, "Hey, that's the same time as a commercial," and she would smile her "you know what I mean" smile. That's how paranoid they were back then.
Again, the broadcasters and channel owners are impediments to innovation and killed it were they can.
