Virgin Media cable user in the UK here.

I had their Tivo box until a couple of years ago when the forced an "upgrade". The new box has uch better hardware but the software was a leap backwards.

Regarding ads, on recorded programmes I can fast forward through them. It's not a direct skip but can jump +30 seconds at a time.

When viewing through any of the channel apps most of them used to allow skipping, but over the past few months it's now blocked on all of them I think. They do tell you how many adverts there are in each block and how long the one is, such as "2/10 29 seconds to go". Unfortunately they don't tell you the total length of the break, some sections are just a few seconds.