DVR Playback reliability is terrible

I estimate 9 out of 10 of my recorded shows don't play from beginning to end without interruptions and sometimes won't finish at all. Sometimes it'll stop mid-show, tell me there's a problem, and skip either forward or backwards as much as 10 minutes before resuming. Sometimes it'll stop, the screen will go blank and locked up for as much as 3-4 minutes before kicking out of playback altogether and ask me if I want to delete the recording. In such cases, after saying "no", we can try to watch it again, fast forwarding up to the point of interruption. Sometimes it'll continue on without problem, sometimes it will continue for a while before having another interruption, or sometimes it'll stop again in the same place. Sometimes after 3-4 attempts, we'll actually make it through the show and sometimes we never do. There's no consistent failure mode. Browsing the forum, I see other people have had playback problems too, but no solution was provided to their posts, support just asked questions. I'm really sick of these issues.