I'm so glad that the sleep mode is gone! Every time we wanted to rewind live TV it seemed to be sleeping. And if you don't rewind in a 3 hour movie, that annoying popup telling you to press a key to not go into sleep mode would activate only at the most critical scene in the movie.
Glad to know that the old functionality is back. However, it's packaged in the new "Surprise Me" feature.
What is the "Surprise Me" feature, you ask? Aaahhh, it's fun! If you hit the rewind button just right (I think by holding a fraction of a second too long, but I can't make it happen consistently), you'll pop back two hours instead of starting the rewind. Then try to fast forward (when the Play button didn't register the first six times you pressed it), and you'll pop right back to live TV -- or start the fast forward process.
A cool feature (that seems to work consistently) that complements the "Surprise Me" feature nicely is that if you press and hold the rewind or FF buttons once the function starts (assuming you're not a victim of the "Surprise Me" feature), it will skip in 15 minute increments.
The "Surprise Me" feature also works in the programming guide. If you opt to record a program in the grid, sometimes it'll choose the next time slot to record.
It's even in the List feature, selecting the program that's next on the list to show instead of the one you really wanted.
Yep, we LOVE the "Surprise Me" feature. It's highly entertaining -- unless you're the one attempting to do anything with the remote.