Welll, do you know if the symptoms I'm having are the same or similar to others whose problem turned out to be the auto-sensing ethernet port?

Also, if I can't find a 10 Mbps hub, can the current breed of 10/100 switches be set to 10 Mbps?

Yes your symptoms match. That doesn't however guarantee that it will fix your problem I'm afraid (my Linksys Wireless-Ethernet bridge will not work with my Receivers even with a 10 Mbps hub in place).

No you can't simply tell the switch to use 10Mbps and anyway it isn't the speed that is the issue, it is the auto sensing of other bits and pieces as well. Basically the Receiver doesn't wait long enough to hear back from the switch, so while the switch is still doing its auto sensing of various things the Receiver has already given up.

Possibly if you had a very fancy 10/100 switch you could tell it to turn off all the auto-sensing functionality for the port, but the switch in your
wireless bridge is not going to have that feature.

Picked up a refurbished Netgear EN104TP hub on eBay and put it between my wireless bridge and the Rio/Dell receiver. I've been able to consistently acquire and maintain the coveted blue note since then.

Now, if I can just get my other receiver to boot up with anything but a blank screen...

Yay! So it was the hub issue, then.

The reason we didn't suggest it sooner is that you said you sometimes got the receiver to work. All the other times I've seen the hub problem, it was 100 percent failure. Yours is the first where the hub issue was an intermittent thing.

Anyhow, glad you're working again.

I also get an intermittent issue when I plug my Receivers into power line Ethernet adapters. About one time in three the Receiver will display the same problems as I have with 10/100 switches when first turned on and I'll have to power cycle it to fix it.