VIP 722 Freezing

I have had my VIP 722 for about 8 months with no issues.

It is in a fully ventilated area, cooled even more with a fan. This is the same location and method of storage I have used since starting my Dish service. I mention this primarily to answer the questions that will inevitably come.

Starting about 3 weeks ago an issue began.

There during playback of a recorded show the screen froze. I attempted to use the remote to end the freezing to no avail. The situation was remedied by hard rebooting the VIP 722.

The situation again returned during playback of another recorded program.

I decided to keep the errored program on the DVR so perhaps the issue would be isolated. This did not keep the issue from happening again.

So, this leads me to draw the conclusion that the internal hard drive is having a problem. Perhaps bad sectors, perhaps something else.

I have never seen the issue during live shows or noticed it during playback of a program from my external hard drive.

I have yet to contact Dish since the issues were infrequent, but now they are happening more.

I was hoping to check with the "experts" first.

Thanks for any ideas.

Seems like the most logical scenario. Just wanted to see if there were any other ideas. Really bums me out having to lose a DVRs worth of recorded content because of the hardware.