To the 522, 'New' episodes are ones from the CURRENT YEAR. So if you tell it to record 'new eps' on say, VH1 or MTV (know how they replay stuff OVER and OVER?), it'll get every epsisode, though it's not supposed to get repeats that are already on the HD.
I don't know why they can't have the box read the info tag for the word "new". Oh, well...