dvr's gone

[Electronic M]

I'm stuck in an annoying position. The TV shows I timeshift/archive are (only) on cable and the damn local cable company encrypts literally every channel on QAM so the only way to tune it is with one of their damn cable boxes which only output RF or HDMI...I can record the RF NTSC outputs of the box but I want to watch my HD late night shows in HD without staying up (and also save them for the future)...
So I bought an HDMI splitter (that strips copy protection from the signal) and an HDMI capture card...The card worked maybe 5-6 times and died (may have been the card or my computer...other PCI cards have had issues with it).
So I then bought this Cloner Alliance HDML recorder box...It has yet to completely die with a lot of use but it is about as dependable as a first generation VW beetle on a rainy day...The damn thing is hyper-picky about what USB memory it will use and how it is formatted...Hell even when it will record on a thumb drive it will often randomly stop recording, and sometimes corrupt those cards (either requiring I format the card or corrupting it beyond the ability to format it).
So far my situation seems to have no foolproof solution for recording. I wish they could just make these products as reliable as VHS decks were...I should not have to try a bunch of products to find some magic combination that works.
The Chinese companies producing these shitty HDMI capture boxes should be ashamed of themselves.