Seeking or fast forwarding?

Two months ago I bought my first television set: 42” Panasonic plasma. And as TV without cable is not so useful I also got cable TV with their set top box. One of features which STB has is possibility to record TV shows. It also automatically record during watching so pausing film just because of something is not a problem.

But watching already recorded TV shows gives me strange feeling… That’s because of a way of moving backward/forward in the film. It works like in old video tape devices :(

When I am watching films on my computers I am using MPlayer for it. On cursor keys + PgUp/PgDn ones I have seeking for 10s/1m/10m which is immediately jump. On set top box I got fast forwarding instead which does not allow me to quickly jump over commercials or part of previous show which got recorded before main show. Same problem appears on Philips MCD-712 player which I use to watch DVD/DivX/Xvid films. It gives x1/2/4/8/16/32 playing speed but no seeking to which I am used.

I wonder when vendors will notice that more and more customers never used tape based devices (never mind video or audio ones).

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