I like SageTV ( http://www.sagetv.com/ ), especially the one-click commercial skipping; it has (had?) its occasional hiccups, but this might also be a function of how much one fiddles with the hardware/software setup :-) It seems pretty mature (it's at v6.x by now), has an active user/contributor base, and handles multiple receivers and set top/converter boxes with IR control nicely. It has a free trial.

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0812.2299 is a better (free) link to the preprint.

...and was therefore dropped by e.g. Hongkong as a response to the swine flu 'pandemic'. While we were there in May they changed their policy from quarantine to supervised medication once a day. Would have sucked to get stuck there for a whole week just because of elevated facial temperature - whether it's caused by H1N1, or 'normal' flu, or just because you're lugging heavy bags around after dehydrating for 12 hours in some damn' UA airplane with smelly watertanks.

Yep - you could see that when they redid I-88 near Chicago: they only put maybe a foot of gravel instead of the three needed to get drainage below frost level - this guarantees frost damage and the next rebuilding contract.

Actually, it still is quite fast. Nobody wants to risk further damage to the machine just to get the first data in a few months earlier. Ok, except maybe for a few grad students and post docs whose time is running out...
All the gory details on the decision making process can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/chamonix2009

In the mean time we can run the Tevatron a little bit longer... :-)

You're in luck, because exactly that is already a requirement.