Regardless of any remote control platform considerations, there is also a human element -- the delay before the human can respond to the start of a commercial break. Perhaps the delays should be 59, 119, 179 seconds. After a few beers, maybe this should be 55, 115, 175.

If the control platform supports the feature, a timer could be terminated early. Otherwise you'll be adding still more buttons to un-mute early and dealing with what happens when the original timer spews it's queued commands.

Ernie's DVR scheme might work for you, but you are likely to become farther and farther behind in real time as you jockey to avoid commercials. Probably, this is not a big deal, but you could miss the beginning of a following program on another channel.

You could turn the whole scheme inside out and record the program before watching. At this point you will be jumping ahead to avoid commercials. Overall, you'll be spending less time in front of the set or watching more programs in the same elapsed time, but you will not be watching in real time.