The UI of the Echostar boxes is so bad that I'd only use the video signal and pipe it into a PC-based PVR. That would also let you set up more than 2 tuners within a single PVR.

In Canada we don't have DirecTV, so we're stuck with the Echostar boxes from ExpressVu or even worse UI and boxes from StarChoice. And then of course there's digital cable here with boxes featuring even more horrendous UI implementation.

The DirecTV boxes looked pretty sharp when I saw them demonstrated at CES before they were released. I think they're putting a lot of work into their software with NDS and likely have an actual roadmap unlike the boxes from China (Echostar, etc..)