Mark, no it's not back at retail. You have to pick up extenders used. The Sage forum is the best place for that as the prices aren't as crazy as eBay.

If you've already got WMC running, then you can use that. But put it this way... DVR/PVR software is DIFFICULT. Super difficult to design and quite difficult to implement. Everyone that has achieved a stable platform has taken years to do it - at least 5 years of full-time development with at least a handful of engineers.

The Boxee Box software has had over 5 years of development behind it and thousands of beta testers. I (and pretty much everyone in their forum) still consider it below beta level. I don't hold much hope for DVR/PVR from them.

To your WMC system you can add the (slightly delayed) Ceton Echo extender which should be much better than XBOX 360 in every respect for this purpose. I recommended Sage because it's the only thing "available" today that already has proper extenders you can buy/use right now. I'm not a big fan of the XBMC-style newer UI, so I continue to use the older UI. It's a lot more versatile than WMC and can easily handle as many tuners as you want to put in the box. But if you don't cut the cord and want to keep CableCard with your current Ceton box, you'll need to keep using WMC.

Dish seems to be losing channels every day. I keep seeing scrolling messages on Buffalo locals saying they're about to be dropped on Dish. I do love the commercials I've seen for "The Hopper!" though.

If you can connect your WMC system to your TV, you can try SageTV without spending a dime - just install the software. Extenders are anywhere from $150-$300ea on the used market. You can also place-shift using a computer instead of an extender. I just picked up the last extender they released before the Google acquisition - it's only a little bit bigger than my hand. Two decks of playing cards next to each other on the long edge with a few extra cards stacked on top. This one is going in the bedroom.