DVR? Should be called DVI... Digital Video Irritating

A little over a year ago I got a DVR, and frankly it was something of a disappointing, costly hassle at the time. Since then I've at least been able to enjoy the DVR service - so it's not a total loss... until this week, when my DVR inexplicably decided to quit working.

During playback it would inexplicably freeze for a while... 30 seconds, 5 minutes... whatever. While frozen, the DVR was completely unresponsive to the remote control, but sometimes when it started again it would 'remember' stuff I'd pressed on the remote and do it all. Tonight it froze for 30 secs, then 5 minutes later it froze again, then just a few minutes later it froze for a long time (over 5 minutes) and then sorta turned off then back on or something weird. It stopped recording the 2 shows it was recording at the time, so I told it to record again. While trying to watch programs that had been recorded before, instead of playing it simply asked if I wanted to delete them! That seemed to be the case for several different recorded programs.

I let the DVR go until it finished recording those programs - when all was said and done I still wanted to watch them. Then I tried the only thing I could think of (and incidentally, the first thing they tell you to try whenever anything goes wrong) - I hit the reset button. A few minutes later, when the machine had fully reset, I hit List to see if my recorded programs would play - and the stuff recorded after the weird phenomenon earlier weren't there!

On the up side, it appears to be willing to play the partial recording from before the DVR acted up. But this is in no way acceptable behavior for a DVR!

My Tenant says nothing seems to be wrong with her DVR, so that's good. At least it's just me that has to deal with this, and not a disgruntled tenant! I will be emailing DTV tonight and calling them tomorrow to see if they can come fix the problem - or even identify what's wrong.

Re-reading my old posts about my last DTV customer service experience, I fully expect they'll charge money to fix whatever's wrong. :/