Video skip feature in Windows 7 Media Centre

I mailed this tip to the Entertainment 2.0 podcast recently and got some positive feedback from it, so I thought I’d post it here as well.

When watching a video (recorded TV, avi or whatever) you can quickly jump forward or backward. Just enter a number of minutes and seconds then press fast forward and the playback will instantly skip forward by that amount. For example, to skip forward an hour and five minutes in a film, enter 6500 (65 minutes and zero seconds) and press fast forward. You’ll instantly be 65 minutes further forward in your film.

There is a similar feature using the skip buttons on the remote, but it’s not quite so useful: Enter a number and press the skip forward button. This will then move the playback forward by that number multiplied by the skip amount (30 seconds). For example, enter 10 and press skip forward and it’ll move by 5 minutes (10×30 = 300 seconds = 5 minutes).

Both of these features need Windows 7 and also work on extenders.

———-IMPORTANT EDIT———-

Thanks to this thread on TGB I’ve seen that there is an even more useful skipping feature: Just type in a number of minutes and press Play. Then, regardless of how far through the video you already are, the playback point will instantly go to that number of minutes from the start. So, enter 65 and press Play and you’ll instantly be a hour and five minutes from the start of the video. Wow!