I recently picked up this box from my provider and noticed that I will get intermittent audio drops and video freezing which seems to be pretty common from my searches...but what I can't figure out is the recording capacity. I have confirmed it has a 160GB HDD but it still indicates I can only record 35 hours of programming, less if it is HD. Shouldn't this drive be capable of 35 hours of HD and ~ 160 hours of SD? Could my HDD be crapping out and causing these problems?

No. One hour of HD consumes up to 8.6GB. Do the math.

High-definition capacity for a 160GB DVR is ~20 hours. SD will vary from 80 to 120 hours depending on the channel and bitrate.

What market are you in? What channels do you see this video freezing on? Did your provider recently add new channels?

I have Service Electric Cable TV....not the greatest and I don't think they have added any channels or services. Most of the audio drops and freezes I have been noticing were on NBC HD.

Also based on your capacities there does appear to be soemthing wrong with my unit since it says the max capacity is 35 hours for SD...if it said that for HD I would have been pleased by 35 hours of SD is rediculous. My old 80GB TiVo could do close to 80 hours of SD.

If you delete all your recordings, what does the DVR say for capacity?

With some Motorola firmwares, a 'problem' can occur where space from deleted recordings is not made available for new recordings. I believe a hardware reset is usually require to fix that problem.

With nothing on it I saw 35 hours of capacity....how do I do a hardware reset? I guess it can't be as simple as cycling the power since I have done that several times when reconnecting the components in the new media center.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_use_a_Motorola_DVR/Resets