The IR blaster does suck. In fact, that is one of the two reasons I got rid of digital cable, the other being I didn't watch any of the chanels. The IR Blaster is buggy indeed, and insanely slow.

Luckily, I worked out the connection to my parents' sat box, and if you can control a box with serial, there isn't any problem. I'm not sure if any of them come with serial inputs, though.

Oh, Brad, I think standalone Tivo's have 4 recording settings. I believe they are Basic, Medium, High, and Best. I think that typically, the storage advertised on a Tivo is the maximum at Basic quality, which is not very good at all. In the past, I've been recording almost entirely on Medium, which is not noticeably bad enough to complain about (for me). Now, I'm archiving several shows and saving them at Best quality. I think I read once that on a 30 hour standalone Tivo, Basic quality will give you 30 hours, whereas Best quality will give you a little more than 9. Not great, but when you can back them up (which I'm still trying to do), that becomes inconsequential.