descentr,
Right now you have to update the unit every 4 day for new listing info. This will be extended to 2 weeks worth of data shortly from what I gather. This data is included with your purchase of the Harmony and isn't charged for. As for the future, you would have to phone the company but I haven't heard that they plan to charge extra for this.
As for toggling between channels, I just locate the the shows on the unit's display screen and click back and forth between them. I suggested that it would be valuable to have a Quickview button and I think they are looking at adding one, but nothing definite yet. If you want to view Channel 47 you can access it directly by selecting it from the "Advanced.." menu. I haven't used this method yet, but it is there if you want to use it. Using the TV guide menu or the Channel menu you can select either the specific show (Everyone Love Raymond) or the specific channel (ie. CNN, TNN, etc) respectively.

Hope this helps......brownman