When we moved into our current house in 2005, we got a present from DirecTV: A Samsung SIR-4080R DVR. We use it a lot (and I should note that we do not have HD service nor HDTVs, nor are they in our near future). We’ve had a fan go bad and a tuner go bad, and each time Weaknees has helped up repair the DVR. Recently the DVR has started to act up again — this time is it randomly rebooting while watching TV. According to the Weaknees FAQ, this is often due to a hard drive starting to fail. Given that (a) we do not have HD nor plan for it in the near futures, and (b) all the current DVRs from DirecTV are HD-DVRs (well, they do have one standard, but it isn’t Tivo), and (c) the new HD DirecTivos cost even more than DirecTV DVrs, we’d like to stick with the current box. So….
Tomorrow my wife is going down to Weaknees in Culver City, and bringing our box in. We’ll have them do the flat fee service (which will diagnose whether another tuner is failing), and have them upgrade the hard disk so we can hold more programs. Hopefully, they will be able to move the old settings over as well. However, there is a risk we’ll lose the saved programs.
P.S. to Erin: We have burned a DVD of Steel Magnolias for you just in case. I also walked through the settings menus after the movie so we have a record of our settings.
Good luck.