Way back in the day when I used SageTV to record live TV there were programs that would automatically identify commercials and skip them for you. Computers are way more powerful now so I doubt it will be long before there's and app that automatically downloads your favorite YouTube channels and prescans the videos to skip the ads.
I usee to wait by the VHS player and manually press pause while recording tv shows. In ironic retrospect, I find old 80s-90s commercials to be more kino than the tv shows I recorded.