My sound stuttering issue was fixed by switching down from surround sound to stereo. I still haven't had a chance to pick up an optical cable, so maybe that will let me run surround sound.
Last night we lost the television signal altogether. We could access the guide, but couldn't see any picture including our recordings. Thanks to asirota's posts I was able to try a soft reset (no luck) followed by a hard reset and everything came back.

