My friend with an HR44/700 said hers just started doing this. She would normally pause the local evening news just as the broadcast got started and then head into the kitchen to make dinner. When she got done she would hit Play and be able to skip the local commercials. Yesterday she said she was surprised to hear voices from the TV and her Genie had resumed on its own, maybe a minute or two after she paused it.
I think the trick is to Pause, then when the message pops up about pressing a button to continue to pause, press a key. When I tried that the program stayed paused for as long as five minutes before I resumed playback. If I didn’t touch the remote, it started playback a minute later.