The box works, but I’m not sure it’s really ready for prime time. Last night, for instance, I had to do a hard reboot two times because it locked up and would not respond to the remote. It did a terrible job recording Ugly Betty (on ABC) last night. The video was really mangled, almost to the point that it was not watchable.

The recordings also seem to stall during playback, almost like a bad DVD. When it stalls, no amount of button pushing — fast forward, reverse, play — seems to make it go. It just sits there for a while and then starts over again from the beginning of the recording.

Earlier in the week, the box lost its mind somehow, and would no longer receive my local HD channels. Just all of a sudden they weren’t there when it was time to start recording prime time shows. I called on that one and they sent some data to my receiver and then had be reboot and they came back.

Ugh. I’ve been hoping that this new DVR (with an updated antenna dish) would finally replace my slowpoke DirecTiVo and allow me to get local channels in HD. Looks like this one isn’t ready for primetime.

Meanwhile, DirecTV pushed a setup message to me over the weekend informing me that the long-awaited 6.3 software update will arrive “soon.”

And no, I won’t fork over a grand (including the cost of a lifetime subscription) to TiVo for its new Series 3 box. For one thing, that price tag is ridiculous. For another, it would mean switching to Comcast. Shudder.