Symptom- cisco 435 DVR misses a lot of button presses on the remote. You have to get very close to get remote to work. You may have a Panasonic plasma.

Diagnostic- try unplugging TV (leave the DVR box on) and then look at front panel of DVR box. When the DVR box recognizes remote button presses you will see the little indicator on the front by the clock flash. See if it flashes for every button press when TV is off (i.e. it's not missing any button presses now). If so then the TV is somehow producing infrared interference when it is on.

Solution- (from another forum post)
»forums.verizon.com/t5/FiOS-TV-Te···p/425719
Try changing the picture settings on the TV using the TV's remote, esp. don't use "VIVID" on the Panasonic plasmas. You may also try shielding the DVR from the TV, or plugging in an IR extender and placing it so that it minimizes the interference, but this did not help for us.

Analysis- this seems to be an issue with the IR receiver in the cisco 435 combined with the picture settings on certain TV sets. An old Comcast Motorola DVR did not exhibit this problem.