I upgraded my Dish Network 722 DVR to the Hopper. This was of course accompanied by a series of customer service calls, misunderstandings and corrections that I don't feel like going into here or now. It's too soon.

The new equipment has an improved UI seeing how it's been over 6 years since I had the last one installed and this is at least the second generation of the Hopper. With the improvements come change and change isn't always easy. Previously the recorded shows were grouped (by our choice) by show title and ordered by what was recorded last. Our recording habits were a little gluttonous. Choosing a show became harder and harder to base by mood. We sought a neutral solution.

I downloaded Big Sauce Radom Number Generator for iOS on my phone and used the total number of shows recorded to get a list of numbers. Each show was numbered by the DVR. We simply went to that number and watched the oldest episode of that show.

The Hopper doesn't have a list so much as a grid of icons for the shows.

This is not an image of my DVR

This now begins my new search to find a way to randomly choose something to watch on my DVR.

Keely suggested getting a set of 2 random numbers and assign them coordinates. For example "2,4" would be the second row fourth column (in the image above that would be 2&1/2 men).  Its a sound method but we're going to spend more time than I'd like determining how many rows there are at any given time.

Wish me luck.