They just didn't include the ethernet drivers for the DirecTiVos, AFACF, since all the data is coming over the satellite connection anyway. They're pretty easy to initialize.

The Home Media Option is not available because TiVo doesn't control the software distribution for DirecTiVos, DirecTV does, and they apparently don't want to have it. We've also lost out on a lot of other random features that SA TiVos have. Sorting the Now Playing list is at the top of my list of things I really want. Anyway, point being that that's not a technical issue.

However, the secret to video extraction is apparently a module that prevents the recorings from being scrambled, appropriately called "noscramble". However, that apparently prevents scrambled recordings from working. So I probably won't be getting on that real soon. There's also some implication that even TivoWeb requires noscramble, so I may not be doing it at all for a while.