I've been a heavy user of Tivo from 1999 to a couple years ago when I dropped cable TV. I have never heard of SkipMode. Is it something they just added? because "longest-standing and most popular DVR features" doesn't sound like it was just added.

Never owned a TiVo, but I just looked up what skipmode is, and I thought that was the whole point of a TiVo.

Like, it has always been advertised as record shows and skip commercials. When they said skip commercials in the early 2000s, did they just mean fast forward?

there's a 30 second skip button, and also the fast forward button is really well tuned so you watch for the end of the commercial break, hit play, it jumps back a few seconds to where you couldn't react fact enough. It all worked very well somehow.

Some commend on Reddit said it was introduced in 2015. I can't verify that.