Hughes Electronics owns DirecTV. Hughes Electronics was recently purchased by one of Murdock's companies (Sky TV I think) for the express intent ot getting into the US satellite business. Sky already has a PVR device that they developed, so that's probably why they dumped Tivo more than anything.

Quote:
The rational behind this was to provide a unified experience for customers with a single UI for every box and to reduce support costs.

I actually think this is a good idea because so many DirecTV receivers had horrible interfaces. To make it worse, they are all different. I really liked my Sony a lot - too bad they didn't go with that one! This must have been a recent move though.. my father just signed up for DirecTV last winter (March?) and was given all RCA branded boxes.