Hey Dave, this is way cool! I was searching for a method of scheduling clear QAM on my FusionHDTV5 USB Gold pc-based recorder and ran across your earlier posting http://www.techlore.com/blog/entry/22638/Beyond-TV-Beta-Get-New-Features-Now about the new BeyondTV Beta to do this. Whether it will work with this hardware (or not) will have TBD. I joined techlore.com to post a reply and started checking out your other blogs and ran across this little surprise! How remarkably coincident...

Just today I received a "Dear Customer" letter from FreeDTVShop.com informing me of the following, "On the evening of June 9th, Charlie Ergen, CEO of Echostar Corporation, announced on his Charlie Chat television program on the Dish Network that the DTVPal would be selling for an increased MSRP of $59.99 instead of the original $39.99 MSRP that had been consistently stated by Echostar since January, 2008. This announcement was a surprise to us, as well as our distributor and representatives at Sling Media, especially given that the product was due to be released in approximately one week."

FreeDTVShop.com had been running a promotion allowing those somewhat early applicants for the U.S. Gov's $40 DTV Converter Box Coupons (...that expire a mere 3 months after issue date!) to place an order for up to two DTVPal converters to be pre-purchased for $2.50 each plus shipping before their coupons fade into historic plastic artifacts. Oops! Hope is dashed yet again...

In all fairness, FreeDTVShop.com did indicate that only authorizations against credit cards were obtained and that no funds were actually transfered. They also assure us that coupon numbers were not invalidated and would still be good if (and it's a very big "if") they have not yet expired before this now outpriced unit becomes available. Eek!