No green screen, just the aforementioned reboot / just a sec / funny colors / reboot cycle. Not entirely unlike the Mars Spirit rover.

I'm running off on yet another business trip (*sigh*), but if it's still fubar next week, I may well take you up on your backup offer. That would almost certainly get me through until the snazzy new HD TiVo is out. For the smartcard issue, I'll just call up DirecTV like a naive customer and say that my box failed and I've got a new one and could they help me make it work.