Works fine for live tv...but not for viewing recordings

In the past 11 months, I have had 7 HD DVRs from DirecTV...most of them involved the HR21. I will speak directly to this current box.
The pro of this box, is that it provides me the most beautiful picture of LIVE HD TV programming on my 63" Samsung Plasma HD. Exactly the quality I was expecting!! The remote has the ability to move in 12 hour increments within the guide. Recording a program is a simple one RED button push. Push it twice...and it sets the recording for the entire series of that show - VERY nice feature!! A quick press of the blue button, and you get a footer banner version of the TV guide. It allows you to page through the guide (which can even be a custom short list guide) without the screen image being blocked or minimized.
The con is that watching recorded content is so bad, that we don't even try any more. Whether we attempt to watch a recorded show....or we PAUSE a show, and try to play the show just a little bit behind LIVE TV....we get the PAUSE feature. No...not when WE want it to pause...but done on some automated intermittent series of pauses at intermittent durations. Watching 6 minutes of a show, could be interrupted with one of these automated pauses (picture FREEZEs on the screen, and renders the remote in a lock-up mode...press all the buttons you want..it will not change anything but your mood. The freeze up might last for 3 seconds or up to 3 minutes. Your next freeze up can happen in the next minute....or many minutes. But right now...we are not getting any more than 5 minutes between freezes. If this is a feature, to keep TV addicts from bladder problems...thank you for the thought...but I think I would prefer the old MANUAL USER selected PAUSE feature!!