There is some really nice direct tv equipment that blows cable out of the water. The new receiver boxes use what is called SWIM technology. You only need one main receiver to be able to do a mix of having five TVs or recording five shows. How it works is really simple. You have one main box and then tiny boxes at each other TV wired at the house. The main box has the computer hard drive for holding all of the shows. It has five TV tuners. That mean it can either be recording or broadcasting TV channels to up to five TV sets at one time.
If you have three televisions, you can be recording two shows live if the three televisions are actively watching shows. If you have one TV watching a show, that leaves four TV tuners available for recording live shows. Get it? it is a mix or match of up to five at one time on one main box. In our house we have two televisions. One in the living room and another one in the bedroom. We are usually only watching one TV at a time. That means one space, if you will, is used up on the box to watch the show we are watching. That leaves four spaces for recording live shows.
I can stop watching a recorded show in one room and pick it up where I left off at the other TV. This is great for when I am wanting to wind down a bit in bed before I go to sleep. It also beats falling asleep on the couch and getting a sore neck. If we add another TV, it feeds off of the main receiver to have all access to everything recorded on the DVR. Whatever is recorded on the main box is available to all the other TVs connected to that box, which is up to five.