Kodi on Fire TV Cube: skip commercials with Fire TV Remote

My wife enjoys watching videos on Kodi, which we used to run on Windows. But, there were 3 remotes involved:

• TV remote: power on/ off volume
• Windows MCE Remote to use with Kodi
• Roku remote to view Netflix and Amazon Prime Video content

The Fire TV  Cube was a great upgrade. You can power the TV, navigate (some) content, and other functions by voice. And, when you really need it or prefer it, there’s a single remote that completes the package. Since the Fire TV Cube is also a front-end for Netflix/Prime Videos, we could also eliminate the Roku. One Cube Remote to rule them all!

I side-loaded Kodi and was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was - performance was surprisingly snappy! 

However, since Kodi is side-loaded, at the moment you have to use the Fire TV Remote to navigate around, not voice commands. It wasn’t long before we tripped over a little problem: skipping commercials on DVR recorded content.

Here’s how you do it, from the Fire TV Remote:

• Press menu/context button while Kodi is playing 
• Press Up until the timeline/scrubber is highlighted
• Press Right 4 times quickly to skip a 3 minute block of commercials 
• Press menu/context to release focus from the timeline

That’s it!

To get different skip times:

• 1 right: 10 seconds fwd
• 2 right: 30 seconds fwd
• 3 right: 1 minute fwd
• 4 right: 3 minutes fwd

The same times work to “rewind”, using the Left button.

Ah! Ad-free viewing.