Nope - no to both. It can't record OTA signals (at least without a converter box) and it can't use a drive formatted for a 540.

Are you in Canada?

Nope I am in the USA

If you aren't in Canada, then the 540 and 649 work equally, because you will need a converter box. You can't plug an off-air antenna directly into either one and have it work.

I am left in a pickle. Do I keep the Tivo I have and try to exchange the Weeknees products I've purchased or do I Dispute the seller, try to get my money back, and try to find a 540 somewhere on earth that can go with my 540 Weaknees stuff?

My Problem: I have an autistic daughter who currently has all her shows on an old directv tivo. I was told that if I got my hands on a 540 Tivo I could record the shows on the old DirecTV tivo directly to the 540 through it's over the air capacity, then I could use pyTivo to move the files over my network, rename them and send them back to the 540.

My Daughter also has a large DvD collection (Sesame Street, Blue's Room, etc) she knows all of these DvDs word for word (because of the autism) but she's constantly breaking the DvDs causing us to replace the same DvDs over and over to the tune of hundreds of dollars. I was told I could rip the DvDs to my computer and move the movies over the network to the 540 so I wouldn't have to keep buying the DvDs over and over.

My daughter does not communicate much with us, when she talks it's usually in order to get us to change the show on the Tivo or put a DvD in. When she asks for a DvD that she has broken, or a Tivo show she has deleted by accident, we have to tell her that we cant do what she wants. This can lead to hours of crying and screaming both by my daughter and by my wife and I. I'm really trying to do my best to stop those nights from happening and to give us all a little better quality of life.

Please any help or suggestions would be appreciated, I really dont know what to do at this point.

The 540 and 649 will record the shows in the same way; you don't do it through the antenna port....But if that's what you want to do, you should have considered a Humax DRT400, which has a built-in burner, and which allows you to take a DVD player and play DVDs directly into the Humax and then burn. See:

Humax TiVo with DVD recorder