Resolution: I am posting this for others who may experience the same problem.
I had the Verizon tech out to my house yesterday, went through the problem and everything that was done to resolve it to-date. He verified the problem with his equipement then changed two of the cable connectors, one going into the box itself, one going into the router. Problem has been resovled.
He said the new complimentary upgrade of connection speed was probably the problem (does seem to have begun at that time). The higher speeds require a connection with no issues, whereas the slower connection could live with the bad connection. The cable on the box was a little loose going into its' connector, the router cable connector was poorly crimped. Both cables are pretty old, from back when we had Comcast.
He gave me a pretty technical (to me) explanation of all the communications going on between the DVR and Verizon every time a button is pressed on the remote. Have to admit, the box is responding a lot faster to button presses than it ever did, so I am satisfied that this was the solution. Best of all, contrary to what I was told by the people on this forum (not a knock, just a clarification) I did not lose any recorded programs, either on the box itself or on the external. Thought here was that when I put the new box on and connected the external drive to it that it would scrub all my recordings, it did not, I was able to see everything on the external. Also, when I switched back to my old box, all of the recordings I had on that were still there. I am retuning the new box.
I hope this is of help to someone else experiencing the same problem.
