By the way, what are you thoughts on the HR compared to the ViP now that you have had time to play around with it? Still not a huge difference? My thinking is people are just get familiar with a box, and dont like the other "just because"
I think i actually prefer it.
The hardware features are obviously not as strong (TV2 Output - OTA tuner - Record three shows at a time)
To be honest those are not real issues for us personally.
But features and software and navigability i personally think that the HR series has the edge by a long long way.
My wife - who is notoriously bad tempered when she has to change the way she does anything .. actually prefers the HR series already ... only took her a couple of days to get used to the look and feel of the menu's etc... and let's face it - if the wife is happy - I'm happy
Menu's are much easier to read and easier to navigate IMHO, on-demand content is awesome - media player setup is great for us as i have a LOT of content on my main pc that i was using media players for ... am now able to use the HR-21. The more i use it the more hidden gems I find with the setup that I had no idea were there. (Jump to a date/time in schedule is great - especially if you see a show advertised that you want to record) - Bing able to change the video in the box while still reading the guide without coming out of the guide is a great feature too.
The whole setup just "feels" much more professional ... like you have actually got a team of guys who knows what they are doing working on this stuff ... rather than a bunch of kids who are probably on minimum wage using the time at work to surf for porn and just knocking out minimum spec equipment.
Whole setup hardware wise from dish to receiver seems to be more "solid"
I can see where the OTA - TV2 - 3 show ability would be dealbreakers for some people .. for us it wasnt and were very glad we made the switch.