I haven't noticed much of a speed difference but a recent BrowserMob article has me thinking of switching back to my ISP's DNS servers.

The Show taskbar notifications setting in Windows 7 Media Center (found under Settings>General>Startup and Window Behavior) toggles the appearance of a little red dot in the taskbar when a program is recording.

If DRM is unavoidable for now then Microsoft could at least take a page out of the iTunes Store playbook and allow users to authorize a certain number of computers and unlimited devices to play recorded media.