Flawless as in it has never missed a recording I have set up due to the IR blaster use. It always tunes the right channel. Serial would be nice, but doesnt seem necessary in my case.

I know the integrated units just save the raw stream coming in, but comparing my old integrated unit to my ReplayTV at medium, I see no difference. And this is not to a normal TV, it's to a upscaled 800x600 large monitor.

And RE, commercial skip. The ReplayTV unit he has, and mine support automatic skipping. So, no reaching for the remote when a commercial break comes on, you just sit back and see the little icon pop up when it does this. The newer 5500 won't automaticially skip them, but it still marks where they are, and one button press on the remote skips the entire commercial break. I'm waiting to record the Super Bowl to activate the hidden reverse commercial skip. Instead of it skipping the commercials automaticially, it will skip the game automaticially.

Other out of the box features I can't live without now would be the network. I didn't have to hack anything, and I run a Java application on any of my computers to see the shows. Double click, and I am streaming them to my computer. Or, I can download them for later, like here at work to watch during the downtimes. It's also come in handy for the internet show sharing the few times I forgot to record something. Post a request to a web board, and my unit had the show two days later.

If I want to archive shows to DVD, very easy to do as well. There is a program that sees the commercial skip markers in the MPEG 2 files, and can use them to remove the commercials before archiving.