A little bit of history. I got a HR20-700 about 2 months ago, 4 weeks ago it started locking up randomly. 2 weeks ago it was happening daily. Call DTV all polite and they send me a new unit, even deliver it on Saturday. Get the new one up and running, verify it's working and send the old one back.
Now, the new one while not locking up comletely is doing some really strange stuff.
Tonight, came home, turned on the tv and saw that it was recording a show I wanted to see and it was near the end of the recording. So, I went to my menu, to my playlist, selected the episode to start from the beginning and it wont play and at the bottom left of the progress bar the time reads 0:-59 instead of the usual 0:00.
So, since it's not locked up completely I try another show not recording, same results.
Unplug it, wait a bit, plug it back in and now the episode I wanted to watch that it ws just recording is gone. Lovely it was at the credits before all this started so at least the partial would have gotten me the whole thing. Ah well, I'll catch up on scrubs.
So, I get through scrubs and go and have some dinner. When I'm done I come back to watch some recorded episodes and no matter what I choose I get asked to delete or not delete.
Thinking something is borked with the clock in this thing I unplug it and plug it back in. Sure enough after booting up I can watch the recordings that before it wanted me to delete or keep constantly.
Anyways, after the lock up I called DTV again and they're sending someone out to check the signal strength. Even though everything comes in fine and except for two transponders on 101 everything is above 80. And they're going to replace all the cables from the dish to the receiver.
Sounds to me like a software issue. I think that 0:-59 when it won't play a program might be a clue. I dunno. All I know is the HR20 is bordering on useless becase I now have to plan when to unplug it depending on wether or not I care what it's currently recording just to watch something it's already recorded.
I keep trying to tell my wife it's a bug and it'll get worked out but, don't know how much longer that will last. Only alternative I see would be to put the OTA antenna back on the roof and switching back to the Phillips HD DirecTivo HR10-250 I think. That didn't give me one lick of trouble.
