A friend was in town from Italy recently. She had money from friends to buy two iPhones. I had her e-mail her friends a story, IN AN ITALIAN NEWSPAPER, saying that the 3G iPhone release in Italy was imminent. Her friends didn't care -- they wanted to be the first kids on the block with an iPhone...

I think that for many people in countries where the iPhone is not sold, it is a huge status symbol.

This is utterly false: EyeTV records OTA or clear QAM digital streams without altering them in any way -- they are kept in their native MPEG2 transport stream format and they may be played back in VLC without any changes.

Yes EyeTV software has bugs, but in my experience, by and large works very well. FWIW, I am using it with one HD HomeRun and one EyeTV 500 device, which between them allow me to record three simultaneous channels, while playing back another recording on my Mac Mini.

I've definitely seen reports on the wake from sleep problem, but keep in mind it doesn't hit everyone -- I've never experienced it. My main complaints are digital audio out bugs: lip sync, not releasing audio out when done playing, etc. And recently I've had intermittent problems with the EyeTV not seeing the HD-HR tuner until I stop and restart the EyeTV software.