Hello lancecoon,
I know it's important to have a clear picture quality, especially when programming your favorite programs. There has been an investigation open about similar issues to what you've shared with the DVR programming and quality. One of our moderators shared this was a known issue recently here: forums.cox.com/discussions/tv/live-and-cloud-recorded-video-low-quality/158257.
We've received an update that this should have been cleared just yesterday. With you finding recordings being unavailable last night, could you attempt to record a program today and play it back to see if the quality has improved or is the same and share your findings here?