The Skip function on my Roamio OTA does work very well. I do hope they get the Guide mess fixed.
But as pointed out the OP is trying to compare a company who makes receivers who distributes programming and must negotiate contracts to one who only makes receivers, and in fact has some protection via the Cable Card. Now the Quickmode is indeed something DISH could think about adding, very handy.
I don't use my Skip Mode much becuase I have it for OTA and only record ONE show that has the feautre, but I've not noticed a problem for me on my Roamios (base model, of course, the only model of Roamio having OTA).
MY GOD! The changeover from Gracenote to Rovi metadata caused me great headaches, especialy on one unit that I had to re-do Setup and re-create all my 53 One Passes as the ONLY way I could fix the mess. And I had to spend far too much time removing tons of channels added from San Diego and other DMA's that could pollute some of my One Passes. P-I-T-A!
IMHO, I think Charlie used AutoHop as leverage on the major broadcasters. The 9th circuit ruling on a preliminary injunction makes crystal clear that Dish is in no way violating copyrights by using AutoHop. I also don't beleive that Dish is prevented from expanding AutoHop to other "cable" channels if it wishes, but the media companies will fight to requiure to Dish to honor C3 or C7, meaning they would prefer (or require as per new contracts with broadcasters) to wait until 3 or 7 seven days after original air date to activate AutoHop feature because the channels do NOT get credit for ad views after the 3rd or 7th day of original air date. After that, the channels just
DON'T CARE because it is of no consequence to them at that point. TiVo has far too few users in the US for the media companies to consider TiVo's Commercial Skip to be of any consequence. It would cost them more in lawyers fees than what they would get in return.
Also, I forgot, but in relation to AutoHop: someone mentioned that the trial judge had ruled thet Dish was in breach of contract because Dish made an evaluation copy for AutoHop purposes and, thererfore, broke the clause regarding of no copies permitted "without expressed written approval" from the channel. However, the press, as it often does, reported somewhat inaccurately. What happened was the trial judge ruled that the trial--with NBC being the last who had not settled out of court (enforcing C3 or C7 as part of new contracts)--a trail could proceed but ONLY on the matter of "copy" of content made by Dish for its evaluation as having some merit.
HOWEVER, the 9th
(and the trial judge knows this, as it was in response to her earlier ruling in denying a preliminary injunction that was upheld by the 9th), already made clear that in order for Dish to have violated the terms of the contract that state "no unauthorized copies" of content, the broadcasters would have to PROVE that they suffered loss or damages, and considering that the evaluation copy was only used in-house--not distrubuted publically--and used for evaluation purposes and seen by as few as, perhaps, 20 people, the broadcasters were not likely to prove loss or damages and would NOT prevail. In other words, the broadcasters had no chance of winning on ANY of its claims, even the ONLY claim the 9th felt the broadcasters had at least the smallest of a chance: the evaluation copy without permission.
However, the trial judge was correct in allowing a trial to proceed on this point only because it would allow for the broadcasters the opportunity to prove their claim, but even the trial judge had to know it wasn't going to meet the standards of having suffered loss or damages. As it turned out, NBC also settled allowing Dish to activate AutoHop after the C3 or C7 period, and there will be no trial regarding AutoHop after all now that all plaintiffs have settled out of court, and happily added their content to the SlingTV line-up.
So, the broadcasters and all the other channels, many of them owned by the parent companies of the broadcasters, know they have no chance in court against any commercial skip features (partly because they do NOT own the copyrights to the commercials, as stated by the 9th Circuit) and since TiVo does not negotiate for direct access to the content of the media companies (althogh indirectly providing more content via Netflix, hulu, Amazon and other apps) those media companies have no leverage with TiVo to require them to adhere to C3 or C7 in regards to TiVo's Commercial Skip, a path cleared for it by Dish.
