New DirecTV Receiver

A few years back, I bought my DirecTivo HD Receiver for about a grand (and I'm selling here on eBay, hoping to get $150). I know, I know - it seems ridiculously expensive, especially when placed side-by-side with the four thousand dollar HDTV I bought at the time. There's a price to be paid for being on the leading edge. I received my new HR21-700 receiver and dish free from DirecTV (the receiver is now leased for 2 years at no additional cost) and the cost of TV has dropped to roughly 1/4 of the cost of the original model four years ago.

For those of you looking to make the switch with DirecTV, here's my two cents:
I was a little hesitant switching from the TiVo interface, which I think is the best out there. My current setup had me getting my local channels over the air and combining them through the DirecTivo receiver with my other HD channels, which there weren't too many of.

So far, I'm impressed with the new receiver. The number of channels are great. I get all of my local channels in high def, in addition to most of the major channels I would watch: Discovery, MTV, Spike, TLC, History, and pay channels. The interface is not Tivo's, but it's not bad. There I things I like about it more - like the fact that even as you navigate the menus, the picture always stays on the screen in the corner, plus some of the media sharing abilities to integrate with Windows Media Player on my desktop system. It's no replacement for my MacMini, but it's a place to start. The remote is my biggest complaint. What it doesn't have is the ability to control my receivers volume instead of my TV's volume. This is a given, and something every other remote I've had has had as well. I've got a Harmony 550 programmable remote, which works fairly well for me and gives me the ability to control multiple components and execute series of commands simultaneously.