Really, I'd guess it was a power issue that was just major enough to affect these, but not major enough to affect other appliances.

But you also could have had a surge on the satellite lines (lightning?) or some other dish or dish grounding problem.

I don't buy that.
The first freeze up happened on a clear day, no lightning, no power problems.
All of the units are protected with a pretty hefty home theater surge supressor.
After the original freeze, 2 of the three units have frozen again, but at separate times. The R10 that my kids use froze twice just yesterday... clear weather other than cold, but not as colld as last month.

Here is some more info to consider. We typically do not keep the nunits connected to the phone because we never use PPV. We do this because when we first installed the larger R10 and the R15 we have an enormous number of local calls on our phone bill. We could only speculate that it was the TIVO so we unplugged the phone and the calls stopped. Now we plug in the phone once a month and initiate the phone connection ourself. Anyway, we made the phone calls the SAME DAY that the freeze ups started. Could this be related to a software download? Is it possible to back it out? You can never tell what is being sent into you DVR during the monthly maintenance connection. I assumed that it was the schedule guide, but I guess that must come in through the satelite not the phone.

Russ

There was no recent software download and we have received no complaints like yours, so I think it's highly unlikely.