1 - All the guide data is from the satellite data stream. It can take up to 3 or 4 days to populate totally.

2 - Ive had no luck with college stuff either. Strangely enough my ReplayTV was much easier to set up in that aspect.

3 - The 30 second skip is all I use. However, you can tune the fast forward skip "correction" to be more in tune with your habits. If you notice, when you come back from the 3x fast forward, the Tivo backs up somewhat to try to compensate for you overshooting. That's adjustable.

4 - No idea on the Macrovision.

5 - Depends on your viewing habits. I pulled my original 40GB drive and replaced it with a 120GB unit and ended up with 109 hours. Between that and my 80 hour Replay, I can pretty much record all the stuff I want to. More space is better if you record a lot because you can save things up for longer periods of time. Hell, you can even get full seasons of shows using the "Dont record repeats" option.