On a lighter note - u can rest ur thumb anywhere, coz the buttons arent that sensitive. If by mistake 1 gets pressed a bit, u dont have to worry about it...hehe
But regarding the convenience, yes it does take quite a time getting used to it. But they need to have so many buttons, after all its HD DVR.......all buttons, except the Purple one at the bottom are useful. Dont know why they placed the purple one........the engineer told me that it was initially meant for a function, but that function is still under development/consideration.