Tivo (at least in my area) must download the program guide from the satellite everytime you wish to view it.

Wow, is that why it takes a long time to refresh the screen when I hit "Watch Live TV", or even page down on that screen? I thought the Tivo was just plain slow.

As was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, you can toggle to a different view which doesn't have that slowness.

Are you sure that it's a genuine download from the sat which makes that screen so slow? I find that hard to believe since the Tivo needs to keep that information in its memory in order to schedule its recordings anyhow.

I don't have any HDTV equipment so the better picture quality of the Tivo isn't that attractive - yet.

Standard def programming that's been data compressed (whether it's Tivo, Replay, Digital cable, or even live DirecTV) looks like crap on any high def equipment. When you get an HDTV, you will be disappointed by just about any digital programming that isn't actually high def itself. The compression artifacts are just that much bigger and sharper on a high def screen because they're zoomed-in.

You get the same compression artifacts on high def programs, they're just much smaller because the overall picture is much smaller. So they're not as offensive.

In my case, I decided to go with DirecTivo, knowing that data compression looks like crap on a big screen. The convenience of a PVR finally outweighed my dislike of compression artifacts.