This is really cool -- Ham radio has been doing almost exactly this for years.

A ground station with nothing more than a 5 Watt handheld VHF transmitter and a regular 19" long antenna can send a position report and message via a number of satellites, including the International Space Station, using a protocol called APRS. As these are low-earth orbit satellites, you generally only have a few minutes window with each pass, but it's not terribly hard to do and there are a few satellites to potentially catch position data even if you don't get every pass.

For sharing between DVR's, one solution is to move all of your capture cards to a single GBPVR server, and then make all of your rooms "clients" to that server. (Or use a popcorn hour media extender as the client)

Another perhaps simpler option is to make each PVR's "recordings" folder a network share, and then add that network share as a "video library" folder on all the other machines, so you'll be able to browse each PVR's recordings from all the other PVRs

http://monzy.org/seti/

"after a bit of VB coding, I had this nifty little program running on a coworker's computer (we'll call him "Klif" to protect his identity). It worked like a charm -- when I came in the next morning, Klif told me rather excitedly that his computer had discovered extraterrestrial life."

I used to run Myth ~2 years ago, but got fed up with issues and linux in general (ok, so kill me slashdot). Then I switched to SageTV which was nice for a while.

IR control: At the time I used WinLirc to transmit IR to control my Dish network box and it worked pretty well. Needed a custom script to take SageTV's channel changing format and translate it to WinLirc's format, but worked after some tweaks. Not sure about motorola but don't see why it would be a problem with enough work - LIRC has a great resource for IR codes. [I was using a homebrew IR blaster... basically an IR diode and a resistor hanging off the DTR line of the serial port]

Built a new HTPC 2 months ago with Win XP for simplicity and netflix access. I tried both GB-PVR and MediaPortal. Mediaportal looks flashier, but the UI is much slower and lacks a few key features... which is why I went back to GB-PVR. I've been very happy. Very few crashes, but should probably setup a weekly reboot for insurance. Yeah it's not open source, but it's still free. There's a plugin for GBPVR which will let you launch Zinc for all your streaming content, including netflix. There's a FANTASTIC web interface, including the ability to stream any of your recordings (think Slingbox). There's a plugin to control uTorrent. And GBPVR can work directly with a media extender like Popcorn Hour, if you don't want to have another PC for another room. [Though you can build a whole mini PC for the other room for the same cost as a popcorn hour]

A friend of mine tried Windows 7's media center features and is very happy. His small daughters can run it, including playing back all of their DVD's that he has ripped to a server.

In the unlikely event that anyone is actually interested:

TUNER: I built the HTPC with a Hauppauge 1600 tuner card. Initially intending to get free ATSC over the air, I discovered I could get the same channels from my cable provider in clear QAM without needing the antenna. (Cable is for cable modem only). The digital side of the tuner can record more than 1 stream as long as it's on the same physical RF channel. Plus I can use the analog tuner simultaneously for standard-def recording. So I can record 2+ shows at once, from one card.

MOTHERBOARD: I put that in a mini itx case on an intel atom 330 mobo with s-video output and built in spdif audio (though I did have to make my own cable for the spdif). Svideo was useful until I got a better TV. Mobo only has VGA output, so that limited my HDTV selection slightly, but not bad. The whole thing (tuner, mobo, case, ram, HD) was http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121359
review, explaining video capability at 1080p: http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/atoms/default.asp?page=8

GUIDE DATA: setup was a pain (and a real learning curve about digital TV), but now that I got it all figured out I'm getting it for free using MC2XML.

Good DTV / QAM Channel references:

http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels_us
http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
http://www.titantv.com/
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/

These are the same worms who survived reentry inside their experimental cannister when Columbia broke up in 2003:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/04/0334219

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/01/1134217

Did anyone else think, from the title, that this article was about some sort of Open SOURCE ATM?

Some sort of Diebold opposite?