Port 80 and Port 8080?

I am new to DirecTV and have had a terrible experience so far with their telephone support.  I have a whole house DVR, and that thingamajig that lets you have On Demand programming at the same time -- only it doesn't work.  After getting different answers from everyone I call, I escalated to a supervisor who told me to make sure port 80 and port 8080 on my router are open.

Now how in the world do I do that?  Aren't they just open by virtue of the fact that I'm online right now?