i hear you, my gf had a ton of issues with her cable box/dvr too, including me swapping both of them out for her last week. they have gone to a new box though made by cisco, will report back on any issues.
i'm too cheap to use a box at my place, i just do the basic 74 channels + roadrunner and pick up OTA HD so i don't have problems.
i think they tried to bring the box firmware development in house instead of relying on their previous vendor and that's what caused all the problems. <---read that online somewhere