I slid the empeg in, it started playing normally. about two minutes later, it randomly switched itself to the Tuner. Strange...

I once had this exact same thing happen to me.

Turned out I had placed my remote on the passenger seat, and then placed a notebook on top of the remote. Every time I hit a bump the weight of the notebook would press a random button.

This was with a Kenwood RCA-600 remote, with buttons that are more prominent and more easily activated than the standard Rio or Kenwood remotes.

tanstaafl.