Although it is unlikely to happen, any electronic equipment can develop a short and send it to other equipment through connecting wires.

Since the box that seems to be giving you problems is a DVR provided by your cable provider, I would suggest asking them to replace it with another DVR.

Unless your provider is one of the greedy ones that require a service charge for any truck roll, it shouldn't even cost you anything. Even if they do have a service charge, you should be able to take your current box back to your local office an obtain a replacement at no charge. 

Not to burst your bubble Bruce, I cannot see how the DVR could have shorted out this power supply in the TV set. This member says another TV set flickers when the DVR is connected and they turn on a light. I would want to know how much voltage is coming out of the strip when a light is turned on. You see the neutral side of the AC line connected to the DVR and the TV set are at the same ground potential, so if there were a short in the DVR somewhere, It would blow the fuse or the circuit breaker in the house and would not feedback into the TV set. Now I have seen a VCR with a switching power supply take out a TV set when the VCR had a problem, but this sent excessive voltage to the video section of the TV set. In other words, it is a very slight possibility that the set was blown out by the DVR but not very likely. I would for sure replace the strip with one of a little better quality, as you may have a problem here. The problem with the "less-expensive" types of surge strips is that they have whats called VDR(voltage dependant resistor), or a varistor inside these units. These are one time devices which means that if you get a power surge, the device inside the power strip shorts out, stopping the surge, but at the same time blowing the strips circuit breaker. When you reset the switch or the breaker on the strip, everything is no longer protected. Some of the better surge strips have a small LED light beside the strip that will glow red if the device is no longer working inside the power strip. So, bottom line, all power strips are not alike. Check yours every once in a while if you have access to it. It turns out, on my TV set and my audio, I checked it last month and found that the red light was out, leaving me unprotected.