Does the DVR need network connectivity to function?

I have a Cisco 9865HDC and contour+DVR service (cox phone, internet, and minibox tv service as well). Everything had been working fine for many months, and nothing has changed in my in-home configuration. However, I've been experiencing some issues lately. 

While internet and phone and minibox TV service are working fine, contour tv service has issues (for several days running).

It will display a channel for about 30 seconds, go blank for about 50 seconds, and repeats this pattern indefinitely. 

However, it does not recognize any commands from the remote. I cannot change channels, and cannot access anything on the DVR. But it does respond to the volume..

I have reset/rebooted several times over the past few days. Everything was working again for about 8 hours or so on thursday (i.e. the DVR was responsive to remote commands and channel changes worked) but then it fell back into this same pattern.

Should I expect, even if there is some issue in the cox network, that I would still be able to access content stored on the DVR? Or does the DVR rely on needing connectivity to the cox network in order to function? It seems like it might since, as I said, it did come back to life for a short period this past thursday, but then again it doesn't make a lot of sense that playing back stored DVR content would need network connectivity. 

thanks.