Quick Fastforward and Rewind in Windows 7 Media Center

Am I the last one to figure out that you can quickly skip through a video in Windows 7 Media Center by doing the following:

1. Press Pause
2. Type in the number in seconds that you want to skip
3. Press >> to jump forward or << to skip back

That’s it.  I stumbled across this feature and it’s something I’ve been trying to find for a while.  When I have a 3 hour long recording that I know I want to start watching 2 hours in, I used to press the  >| button to do 30-second jumps a couple hundred times.

I’m not sure if this feature is new to Windows 7 Media Center, but that was the first version I discovered it in.

Now that you know this, do you know home many seconds is in 2 hours?  Neither do I without thinking about it for a little while.  It is easy to think about 10 minutes (600) so I usually just start with that value.  And then when I need to do larger jumps, I may spend a few seconds to multiply more minutes in my head… 10 * 6 * 2… 600 –> 3600 –> 7200.  Now I can watch that clip again!