HR34 not taking commands from remotes

Hi all - hoping to get some thoughts from the group. My retired parents have a very old HR34 DVR (not sure if it's a 700) as well as two mini Genies. I was at their house trying to program their two new RC73 remotes so that they would control volume and on/off on their Samsung TVs. I was able to do that just fine on the mini but when I tried it on the HR34, it completely froze so I rebooted (using the red peg switch). When it rebooted it was stuck on one channel and the remotes were completely unresponsive (using both the RC73 and the old RC66RX). I've tried the 961 routine and still nothing. I rebooted it 3 times and the same results (or lack thereof). The last one of those with with a DirectV representative. He said at this point we'll have to replace the HR34. I obviously know this means my parents will lose all of their recorded shows which will absolutely crush my mother. The strange thing (or maybe not so strange for you) is that they can still access their shows on the other two TVs via the Genie minis, so my mother is insisting on only watching DirectV in the bedroom and using the living room (where the HR34 is) to stream. Seems ridiculous but I get it I guess. Would appreciate if anyone here has any other suggestions. Not sure, for example, if buying a universal remote would do anything different as it just seems the HR34 is frozen. Thanks in advance.