...30-second skip feature. Is it noticably more useful for skipping commercials than the usual fast-forward mechanism?

Depends on whether you prefer to press the "adv" button eight times to skip a four minute commercial break, or prefer to press the FF button three times (to get to 60x speed) and then the play button once. I'm more comfortable with the latter for several reasons: I get to see little vignettes of the commercials, and every once in a while there is one that I actually do want to watch. Sometimes the commercial breaks are not in 30 second increments -- a :10 station break or network promo can get you out of synch. Finally, understand that the :30 advance hack disables your advance button for jumping to the end of a program with a single button press and back to the beginning with a second.

tanstaafl.