Two suggestions: 1. One button to skip commercials 2. The ability to control playback speed

This is a customer to customer forum only the moderators and a few DTV/AT&T employees read this forum. 

Can you suggest the best way to suggest this to the powers that be at DirecTV to maybe get some action?

 Posting on their facebook/twitter website.

Networks have more restrictions with DirecTV about commercials. For example, more and more On Demand you can't even FF/REW the commercials as normal as the networks force them to play. Though they cannot do this for TV via satellite feed, likely they have rules in place to not allow a feature with sole purpose of avoiding commercials.

I wonder if one day Dish will no longer be allowed to have the commercial skip feature. Networks get their revenue one way or another. Sometimes that is with forced commercials as they are paid for the time slot.

There have always been legal battles over skipping ads in TV shows. I do not watch any on demand programs that have ads you cannot skip, I hate them that much. Dish actually has a team that watches every single program and marks the commercial breaks so they can be skipped with one button. That is the main reason I'm seriously considering switching to Dish. I've been a DVR user since I was a beta tester for ReplayTV DVRs in the mid 90s and I avoid ads like the plague. 

More and more networks force commercials in the On Demand content. This is similar to their own websites as you cannot avoid commercials there either. This has hurt the experience for the customer. Unfortunately, as the feed comes from internet, not the satellite, the networks have more control over it.

As that trend has gotten increasingly problematic, I would expect the networks have stonewalled DirecTV having a commercial skip feature. Not a legal battle so much as the networks do not give permission.

If that key feature makes a difference for you, then at this time Dish may be the better option. But there is no guarantee that Dish will have it forever as the networks have been locking down the commercials over time.

Again, wanted to make two suggestions for the product development at DirecTV to see, simple as that. The only time I EVER watch ads is when I'm at a Packer party, which is the only time I watch live TV. When I watch the game at home I can literally watch an entire game in an hour, skipping all ads and even the 30 seconds between each play. Just think of how much wasted time I've saved not watching attempts by marketing to influence me to spend my money. My time is way too valuable for that. Also the reason I asked for faster playback speeds. I can watch an entire one hour program with no ads at 1.75x speed in about 25 minutes.

DTV has had FF for 30 yrs doubt they are going to change it.

The playback speeds would require an overhaul of the equipment and software. As DirecTV has a new co-owner alongside AT&T, I am curious to see where they go with those improvements. AT&T's direction was an all-in-one setup that was restrictive, so I look forward to more flexibility. That may take some time as we are in the early days of that transition.

Regardless of those improvements, I would not expect a commercial skip feature in the foreseeable future (if at all) for DirecTV.

This is a public customer to customer forum. To influence product development, you would need to work for DirecTV as they make their own internal decisions that seem to have no influence from a public forum.