Greetings folks. We have a DirecTV R10 unit that we got a few years ago. We're experiencing constant failures of the unit, and it's always the same problem.

Here's what happens:

The unit works fine.. shows live tv, records scheduled programs, etc.

At some point, recordings start to fail. The length of the recordings is 0:00. Live TV is no longer available.. you just get a black screen. You can change channels in Live TV, but you never see anything but a black screen, and there is no buffer.

When the unit is in this "failure state", it is otherwise completely responsive. The menus work fine, the program schedule updates, and you can watch previously recorded programs from the Now Playing list. (Assuming you choose programs that were recorded when the unit was not in "failure state.").

When stuck in this failure state, the satellite signal strength is high. Resetting the satellite information does no good. The only thing that fixes the problem is restarting the recorder.

This is happening almost every day now.

A month ago, we tried replacing the hard drive with a weaknees replacement. It didn't help. The problem is happening just as often now.

Any ideas what's going on?

Thanks for your help,
-Garret