Brian,
your client's issue is not at all the same. Ours will always play live.

Normally, in the morning we can turn on the receiver and the TV and back up the reception the normal 90 minutes. This is almost the reverse of what you describe.

Sometimes it's not on the channel we left it on, even if nothing has recorded overnight. We've set it to record at 6 AM for five minutes on the channel we want it to be on, but when we get up at 8 it's not on that channel.

I've asked here if anyone knows how to force the receiver to be on a particular channel first thing after being off for many hours. The best solution was to record for several hours so we capture what we're trying to be able to see.