TiVo's skip button: An appreciation of the button that changed TV forever

The Verge

"It’s the little arrow with a line next to it, and it paved the way for how we interact with digital TV by letting viewers jump freely around a TV show," says Chaim Gartenberg of the TiVo skip button that debuted two decades ago. "VHS recordings could be fast-forwarded, rewound, or paused, but it was only with the move to digital that more granular, real-time jumping around was made possible. TiVo’s ability to instantly go back a few seconds to catch a line of dialogue was far more convenient than waiting for your VHS to finish recording and then rewinding to watch it again. And the ability to jump forward to quickly fly through commercials was revolutionary."