Dish Network’s Hopper DVRs Can Now ‘Auto Hop’ Through Commercials

Tell me if this sounds familiar — you’re sitting on a couch watching television, and the commercial breaks seem way longer than the snippets of the show you’re actually trying to watch.

As it turns out, some Dish Network customers have been granted a bit of respite from that advertising onslaught. Users who have their living rooms tricked out with the company’s Hopper DVRs can now automatically skip every commercial break with a single touch thanks to their newly-launched Auto Hop feature.

They’ll never have to sit (or 30-second skip) through another promo for America’s Got Talent ever again… unless they’re the kind of people who like their television live.

You see, that new Auto-Hop functionality only works as part of the DVR’s PrimeTime Anytime feature, which can automatically record and store primetime TV programs from ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC in HD for up to eight days. That’s admittedly a pretty cool concept on its own — users are stripped of the need to set up recordings and make plans around their favorite network television shows, as their box just stores all of it — and Auto Hop makes it less of a headache whenever people actually get to sit down and veg out.

Most of the time, anyway. According to a recent release from the television service provider, Auto Hop works with “most shows recorded using PrimeTime Anytime,” which only stokes the flames of my curiosity: what shows won’t it work with?

Alas, while Auto Hop would be a marvelous addition to the live television watching experience, we’ll just have to settle for the feature as it stands. Dish subscribers who don’t have the prerequisite hardware (or would rather watch TV at the same time everyone else does) still have the standard 30 second time skip to lean on.