Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

Hack 2 Must-Skim TV

Slide through boring baseball games , pausing only for crowd -pleasing catches and game-tying errors. Cram that unnecessarily lengthy reality show into a scant 15 minutes of onscreen viewing .

TiVo really is "TV your way." Most people assume it's just about pausing live television to visit the restroom, or watching your shows when you're good and ready to do so. But there are more tidbits to be incorporated into your television-watching modus operandi. Here are a few I find rather useful for reducing downtime in potentially engaging shows.

Sliding Straight to the Instant Replay

While the networks do a fine job of highlighting notable sports plays, it just doesn't help if you're out of the room fetching a cold one or more pretzels for your friends . If you're a sports fan and TiVo fanatic, you've no doubt discovered the button. With a flick of the thumb, you've skipped backward a few seconds to catch the splash of that San Francisco homer. Flick it again and you're back at the wind-up.

But did you know that the button, when combined with , can reduce an entire game to just minuteswithout missing a single crowd-pleasing catch or game-tying error? You won't even have time for that cold one! Here's what you do...

Select a game from TiVo's Now Playing List and start it playing. Hit the button on your TiVo remote three times to zip through the game at high speed. Now keep your eye on the network's overlaid onscreen scoreboard, while keeping your thumb hovering over the button on your remote. The second you notice a score change, click once or twice and you're right there in the action. Repeat as necessary.

Sure, it takes a trained eye, but you'll get it in no time. Forget Sports Center's take on the best plays of the daymake your own.

The 10-FF40-10 Solution

With project shows like Trading Spaces and Junkyard Wars and reality shows like Survivor all the rage these days, there's no end to the number of hours you can waste watching other people fixing what you should be fixing or doing what you'd never in a million years (or for a million dollars) actually do yourself.

The showsin case you hadn't noticedare rather formulaic:

1. Introduce the "problem."

2. Watch teams get frustrated and panic for about 30 to 40 minutes.

3. Applaud as things come together or fall apart, depending on the show.

There's a nice recipe for this kind of "Must-Skim TV":

1. Watch the first 10 minutes at normal speed, skipping commercials [Hack #4] of course.

2. Fast forward at the highest possible speed (hit three times) through the next 40 minutes, keeping one eye on the green play-bar at the bottom of the screen, the other on the action, in case there is any.

3. Watch the last 10 minutesfinished rooms, pounded bots, voting off the island, etc.at normal speed, skipping commercials.

With minor variations on this recipe, you can compress Antiques Roadshow to about 15 minutes without missing any of the "action." Or, reduce Trading Spaces to just 30 minutes and improve its quality drastically by watching Changing Rooms , the original BBC versionbut that's more advice than a hack. ;-)

Speed Reading

Local newscasters speak just too slowly for words? Want to skim the cream off that State of the Union Address without waiting for the morning paper to summarize it for you?

Turn on Closed Captioning [Hack #42], and hit once. You'll cruise through at twice the speed (speeding up to three s for commercials), and the Closed Captioning will keep up. Closed Captioning is perfect for skimming the news or cramming two or three of those reality shows into one hour of viewing without missing a single word. Or, if you're embarrassed, you can just claim you're working on your speed reading.

Rael Dornfest and Cory Doctorow