While I will hold out hope that this is the case, I'm afraid that it's going to be more lipstick on a pig.
The HR20-700 was introduced in August of 2006. That means that we are going on 6 years for a piece of equipment now.
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=61862
The units that came after the HR20 are based on that equipment. That piece of equipment wasn't meant to play songs and videos and pictures from external sources and run apps and do all the other stuff that has been crammed into it. It was designed with pretty much the sole intention of recording and playing content from a satellite - primarily video content. Asking it to do all the additional stuff that has been thrown at it is asking too much. It's a woefully underpowered computer.
The new GUI was supposed to resolve the sluggishness. In the final analysis, it would appear that isn't the case. They have had several opportunities to get it done and haven't had any success in doing so. That would tend to indicate that they aren't going to be able to do so within the parameters that they have to work in currently.
The solution for these problems is going to be a new hardware platform. Is the HR34 that platform? Can DirecTV afford to make the investment to upgrade everyone to that new platform? If they can, will they?
Meanwhile, many of us are stuck with not being able to successfully and consistently change the channel on our receivers - a basic function that we shouldn't even have to think about.