Yes, today was the day that DirecTV came and took my old Tivo HD DVR and replaced with a DirecTV HD DVR.  Sniffle...

Background:  DTV has launched several new satellites that has expanded their HD channel lineup considerably. I am sure you have seen their commercials proclaiming that very fact.  These new satellites use MPEG4 for sending down the HD signals.  Problem is (was), my Tivo HD DVR came out long before those satellites went up and was built using MPEG2 compression - in the hardware no less.  So I have been unable to watch some of the newer HD channels on DTV like the Big Ten Network, SciFi, and more.

The Story: DTV called me a few days ago and said that they were going to actually move some of the existing MPEG2 channels to MPEG4 (in particular ESPN and ESPN2) so I was going to get the double whammy unless I moved on to new equipment.  To DTV's credit, they did replace both my DVR and my satellite dish (need one of the slightly bigger ones now) for free.

Well, I have been up and running for a couple of hours now and I have to say that all in all the DTV DVR experience is better than I thought it would be (read a lot of early complaints online), but I already miss my Tivo.  Two big things jump out right away. 

The first is truly a WTF issue.  On the old Tivo, had dual live buffers meaning I could pause live TV on one channel then switch to the other channel and watch it live, pause it, go back, etc.  The DTV DVR has dual tuners but not dual buffers so you have to record two shows and use a cumbersome menu process to switch back and forth.  The live buffer thing is a big deal once you have used it a few times since it can be sooooo convenient in a lot of situations.  A glaring omission on DTV's part and one I miss badly.

The second issue is one of preference, but I really like the Tivo Guide layout much better than the DTV one.  Tivo let me go to the History Channel for example, and see what would be on for the next 10 hours or so.  It was great to be able to find the one-off show and tell Tivo to record it.  DTV forces you into the scroll channel by channel and see the programming for the next hour or so.  To see what is on the History Channel 5 hours from now requires a lot of scrolling and then scrolling back.  Not slick.

I haven't had it long enough to comment on its reliability, scheduling, etc.  But it looks like it has the basics covered.