Philips DSR6000R DIRECTV Receiver with TiVo Service
Don't wait for Ultimate TV
Ultimate TV by Microsoft has absolutely nothing on the DSR6000, except the expense and dubious added benefit of WebTV. I have worked in television production and post production as an engineer for many years now. While I own a DSR6000, I'm an impartial techno-geek. Here is what I know about these competing products. Both machines are almost identical in the specs that count. They both record and output Dolby Digital. They both record to internal hard drives. The Philips' IDE hard disk array is easily upgradeable. I don't know about the Microsoft box, but I imagine it will be also. Image quality from the DSR6000 is exceptional. Recorded material looks every bit as good as DirecTV live programming. I haven't seen any motion artifacting nor the usual MPEG pixelation in the black portions of the picture, at least over and above what one might notice in the original DirecTV signal (and you need to know what to look for).  I'm very pleased with the DSR6000. I'm sure the Microsoft box will be good too but, unless you love WebTV, there's no reason I can see to wait for it.