Let me make a contrarian view -- go w/ the DVR for the cost for now. Since DirecTV ended their investment w/ TiVo a few months back, and DirecTV is bringing out their own DVR based on their existing one used by SkyTV, the main market for TiVo units has dried up.

Since TiVo never made any money anyway, they are in deep do-do now... their main volume customer is gone! The NetFlix deal is not likely to get them anywhere near profitable anytime soon and they have no deals to license their s/w guide -- which is where they excel!

I would return it if you can!