Like I said, I don't have 3 hours to outline the 20+ reasons the Motorola box is crap, but I'll respond to your response:
1) The Pause should be a toggle, LIKE ON EVERY OTHER PAUSE BUTTON IN THE WORLD THAT ANYONE has ever used. I know the directional buttons work, but the reason for the success of products and GUI's in software is that they WORK LIKE PEOPLE expect and there are de-facto standards.
2) The Tivo has again, a MUCH easier 30 second skip; easter egg: Select - Play - Select - 30 - Select (again, for an overall comment on the Motorola box, just compare that with your 6 steps below and your 994 and 00173 codes. Need I say more, really).
BTW, I DON'T WANT to jump back 30 seconds. I want to either FF until I see the beginning of my program and then have Tivo be smart enough to figure it took me a second to hit the Play (hence the 8 second backup) --- OR, I can do the 30 second forward skip and if I go too far, I can press the Tivo 8 SECOND JUMP BACK button once or twice, MUCH BETTER than 30 seconds back. Let's you and me record the same program, then when the commercial starts let's see who can skip it and get to the program first. I will win every time and am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Again, there is NO COMPARISON between the two, don't embarrass yourself. I can speak to both, but have you tried Tivo? BTW, I have seen a couple of comments here about Tivo's with 2 cable cards and reboots and such. Mine works flawlessly and I have never had a problem with it and have had the Series 3 HD over a year now. Again, I've had them all and hope that the worst case scenario is even if Tivo does not survive as a hardware company, I sure hope their GUI and software live forever and is at least bought by someone.
If you want one more, for old times sake, just look at the CRAPPY program information on the Motorola. Yes, you can select a smaller font, but if I remember correctly that gives you about one more line of program info. You can never get rid of the advertising info if I remember correctly, which is just a frustrating waste of space. But let's suppose you could. You are still left with that horrible "horizontal" guide, which you have to scroll right to see what else is on that channel throughout the night. With Tivo, the current channels and time are on the left, and AS YOU SCROLL down thru them, the right side of the screen gives you 5 or 6 of the next programs thru the night (depending of course on the number of different programs and their times). This is hard to explain without seeing it, but it is SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.
Again, it is really BEYOND BELIEF that Motorola is still in business. I sure as heck hope they don't join the automakers and ask for a bailout. Ever get into an American car and not be able to find the trunk latch? I did that once when renting a car. Get in my SC430 or my wife's Camry and everything is exactly where you'd expect it; near your fingers, no guesswork.
I am a red-blooded American, no I do not work for Tivo or own their stock, but I sure wish American engineering would return to greatness. Again, if the engineers would just use their products AND CHECK OUT THE COMPETITION and COPY WHAT IS BETTER, then building a better mousetrap would at least be a place to start. I think they try so hard to not obviously copy good design, that we produce crap. Copy first if you have to, innovate next if you do not have any good ideas; which obviously they don't.
I could go on about Motorola's Razor phone (again, crap, I owned my first and last one). One bright spot of American technology....the iPhone. I made my wife buy one and I have my company Crackberry. Again, one great American product and the other Canadian. Oh well, can't win them all.