When you say MythTV and Freevo are nothing like a TiVo what exactly do you mean? My Myth system has a complete 8 day guide for all the channels I receive, I can record multiple simultaneous programs, pause and skip backwards on live TV, use picture in picture. I've got web access, transcoding to a variety different formats, video streaming to my PDA, music playback, web browsing, etc.

Other than the recommending programs feature and the fact it’s not a simple plug the box in installation, I'm at a loss to figure out why TiVo is so revered.