I watched an episode of this in England over Christmas. The actor playing Doctor Who wasn't the same as the one shown on the SciFi website, but the show was really entertaining!
 

The gentleman you saw playing the Doctor was David Tennant. The fellow playing the Doctor in the episodes Sci-Fi is picking up is Christopher Eccleston. He only decided to take the part for one year.
 

The Eccleston episodes are great - its a darker Doctor than the one we've known before, for reasons you'll discover. Hope you have as much fun with it as we did here in Canada. We got the series pretty much as it was airing in Britain because the CBC is officially co-producing it. One side effect was that we saw the Christmas Invasion special on Boxing Day, the day after it aired in Britain (The Doctor mentions Arthur Dent in it and says "he was a nice man".) Great great stuff.
 

Well, I have one thing to say about David Tennant. YUM.
 

Well I can't speak to "YUM" but he's a definite change from Eccleston. Best news for the second season (and this isn't really spoilery) is that not only will the Cybermen be back for an episode hurrah) but so will Sarah Jane and K9! And there's word of a spin-off which will start in the fall featuring a character which you won't meet for a while but is bound to be controversial for some Americans.