DirecTV is convinced that everyone who uses the Genie wants to control the local receiver by RF. I've got a client who sometimes wants to turn on her whole system, sometimes wants to use the DirecTV remote for just the TV speakers. It was hell figuring out how to program the remote because the DirecTV receiver must be set up for IR. Here's what you do:

Program the RC71 remote to operate the DirecTV receiver.
Then, and only then, does the receiver give you the opportunity to program TV control. So set up the remote to operate the TV.
Then, change the RC71 back to IR control.

Now you can use the RC71 for the TV and DirecTV control, and you can use a URC, or RTI, or whatever remote to control the TV, DirecTV receiver, A/V receiver, etc.

A Hr44 Genie will accept both RF & IR commands at the same time, unlike previous models. So the Hr44 could have been left set to RF, and the universals would still control it by IR.

Thanks, edmund. I did not realize that.

The kicker is that, until I set the RC71 to RF, the choice of programming to control a TV did not come up. It wasn't grayed out -- it wasn't even there!

Right, there are very few tv codes preset into the rc71, and no audio codes. They have to be put into remote by the receiver, and the receiver only communicates two-way by RF.