Using a DCH3416 DVR. Had one for almost two years and not one single issue. Several months ago mine all of a sudden started acting like it was not receiving the remote signals as the buttons were pressed. Sometimes had to hit the button multiple times. So did the obvious thing and changed batteries. This didn't seem to fix anything.
A 2nd DVR was being used in a different room. So I just swapped remotes but got the same with a different remote. I lived with this for about a month. I am verifying whether the DVR itself shows reception of signal on the face. You can see a little indicator light when it either receives or responds to a signal from the remote.
After some Googleing I found where someone had posted a similar occurrence and the response was to unplug the DVR for a period of time as this was like a reset. Didn't work.
I finally took the DVR back and swapped it out. New one worked perfectly.
So now today I'm sitting watching tv and all of a sudden this DVR starts acting up as well. A little different. Seems to be a delayed response from remote operation, when it does respond at all.
I've had my DVR for 6 years (not a typo) and I've had this problem too off and on. I was able to fix it every time by unplugging the DVR for a couple of minutes.
iGuide seems to have a glitch where, after 30-60 days, it can start to get slow to respond to the remote. Generally, the fix is to reboot it. I would still try that first before getting it replaced. It's a software bug, and a newer box wouldn't make a difference.