DirecTV review: New front end and remote

The new remote is SLOW - that is, the DVR front-end box appears to be man in the middle, relaying commands and responses between the remote and the original DVR. As a result, skipping forward doesn't work well, and far too often goes off the deep end into some uncharted territory - as when scrolling down past a list of saved episode, the scroll goes into hyperdrive, uncontrollable by the remote, and then the remote locks up. In general, the engineering of the system is abysmal. And upgrading is a non-starter, because you can't back up your saved programs and carry them forward to a new box - a practice I find bizarre, since the need for backup and restore is implicit in all other data storage systems. The lack thereof is positively Neanderthal. Imagine cell phones that prevented you from carrying your contacts forward to a new phone! It just feels amateurishly built. And remote ergonomics are terrible - shape, location of commonly-used buttons next to buttons that throw you into space. List next to Exit? CH next to Prev, Prev next to FF? Why is there a menu atop the screen that freezes other buttons?