I have no real problems with my HR20 from DirecTV, but previous to that I had a series 2 DirecTivo box. One thing I loved about it was that with a little know-how, you could do some pretty interesting modifications to it. Pop in a bigger hard drive, copy some of the contents from the Tivo to a PC over the network, etc.
If these new Tivos are as "hackable" then I would be very interested.