I don't have any definite answers, but I can certainly toss in an idea -- in all the debate about time required to auto-detect the streams, that too long caused the oft-noted second(s) of silence but too short could cause it to let through some random noise. When that noise slips through could be source-related in this case (RKPhelps' case certainly sounds related to the DirecTV at least in part since the DVD player doesn't exhibit the same behavior).

If this is the problem, there may be a workaround. Do you find yourself using the same processing mode for all your TV watching (in other words, is it all a stereo signal)? If so, you could try disabling the auto-detect for that input and lock it on PLII or whatever you have been using, which might eliminate the problem. Page 31 of the manual has the details of how to do this -- it's the "Surround Data Format Lock" section. If you have some stations that come through in DD5.1 and others that are stereo, you'd probably want to leave it set to auto-detect.

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