Maybe this only applies to a few but my employer matches 80% of my cyclone club donation since its charitable. This would probably eliminate that option, right?
To the question about using the directv switch. You can try asking on this forum
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/
they used to be my go to place for satellite t.v. questions.
good luck
fixed here as well. I did right click and change settings to turn off hardware acceleration. Don't know if that made a difference or not but I don't have the skipping anymore.