For video and recorded TV playback, Media Center has a default skip forward time of 29 seconds and the replay (skip back) time of 7 seconds. These settings may be fine for some, but you might want to increase those intervals a bit to give yourself a few less clicks when skipping though commercial breaks. Since Microsoft doesn’t provide a setting for this in Media Center, we’re going to have to change the values in the registry.
Warning: Backing up the registry before making any changes is strongly advised. You can check out our previous article on registry backup, if you’re not already familiar with the process.
To access the Registry, click Start, type “regedit” into the Windows search box, and hit “Enter.” If prompted by the UAC to allow changes, click “Yes.”
In the Registry Editor browse to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings
Click once on the VideoSettings key to display the values on the right panel. Find the SkipAheadInterval value on the right panel and double click.
This will display the Edit DWORD Value window. Click on the Decimal radio button. You should now see 29000 listed under Value data. The value data is listed in milliseconds, so 29000 milliseconds is 29 seconds.
To set the skip interval to one minute, change the value to 60000. For two minutes, 120000, etc. Click “OK” when you’ve finished.
Now, to change the replay interval, scroll up in the right panel to find the InstantReplayInterval value and double-click it.
Click on the Decimal radio button and once again you will see the value data in milliseconds. Change the value data to your preferred replay interval time in milliseconds and click “OK.”
Close out of the Registry and you’re done! If your Windows Media Center is currently running, you’ll need to restart it before your changes will take effect.
