Yesterday was a day that I really thought would never come. I called TiVo & de-activated one of our two TiVo boxes. It was the culmination of a long road of debate, and horrible service from our cable provider.

I've been waiting to purchase a new HDTV for a long time. I'm not even sure we have bought a real TV since we've been married (the tiny RCA unit that has been in our bedroom doesn't count as a real TV in my opinion). Our living room 27" tube has been going out for about 8-9 months now. With Uncle Sam contributing to our bottom line this tax season we decided to make the investment.

The one problem? TiVo's wonderful HD TiVo units are only compatible with cable companies because they rely on using cable card functionality to replace your cable box/tuner. They literally have no way to interpret & decoded satellite HD signals, which leaves me up the creek. We tried to make the switch to cable when we moved here, but that didn't turn out well ("Charter Sucks & Our New New Phone Number"). So the only options left were to...

1. Keep our Series2 (non-HD) TiVo and make the decision with every program to 1) watch the HD show live or 2) have TiVo record a sub-standard version of it to watch later.
2. Switch to the DirecTV HD DVR and cancel our TiVo subscription on that box.

We chose #2.

I have to say that there is little I am missing at this point from my TiVo. I can't believe I just typed that, but it is true. The DirecTV DVR does the 'big stuff' the same as TiVo:

• Pauses/FW/Rewing live TV
• One-touch recording of programs
• Record all episodes of a favorite series
• Give a multitude of recording options just like TiVo.

What doesn't it do?

• Allow me to schedule a recording from the Internet (only used this a few times)
• Transfer shows onto my laptop for burning to DVD or watching away from the house (again, I don't use this much anymore & we have a set-top DVD burner for stuff we want to keep)
• Transfer shows between DVR units (we miss this one, but we can simply record a program upstairs as well as downstairs if we really want to watch it in either location)
• TiVo Kidzone - kid-friendly menu/recording system (we miss this one, as well, but we can get to some of the same via the DirecTV parental controls)

I like the look/feel of TiVo better, but I have to admit that the DirecTV DVR isn't that bad.

So, we are down to one TiVo. Actually, we still have the other one networked so that we can use it to store programs or transfer recordings we have upstairs to the living room to watch.