Final update - There was no resolution other than to replace the DVR, which I just finished doing. Never did get any follow-up from Verizon, every time I called there was no further info and I wasted lots of time on the phone. I finally decided to try online Chat, that was much quicker and the agent contacted whatever group was "working the problem", he then told me that I had to replace the box. Verizon store is close to me, so I opted to just drive over and do the swap, which went very smoothly because the agent had set up the request in the system.
Unrelated issue was setup failure (someone else has a thread on this) - that finally worked just now. So I'm finally up and running with a clean slate (i.e. an empty DVR)
Thanks to all who tried to help