When I had digital cable TV I was unfortunate enough, over time, to experience the performance of both a Pace and a Samsung SD STB. Both were as slow and clunky as can be, both needed to be rebooted at least once a day, both went into a coma at midnight, the Samsung frequently changed channels on it's own, the Samsung used to display a screen sized black box several times a day to inform me "my
remote would not work while VM were performing important upgrades to my service and I should
press any button to remove this message" 
I persevered with this dreadful service for a long time with seemingly pointless fortnightly engineer visits until one engineer snapped at me that "this is the same service that anyone gets on cable, you will just have to put up with it."
Well that made up my mind, I decided not to put up with it. With the help of a Sky special heights installer I got a dish erected and Sky+ box installed and for years now I have been very satisfied with them.
The sky service has proved ultra reliable as has the box which super responsive and almost never requires rebooting. I only briefly lose my signal during very heavy snowfall or really bad thunderstorms.
I suppose I should be considering upgrading to Sky+HD but as I discern only a trifle more sharpness from HD on my 32" Panny and the ageing Sky+ continues to perform faultlessly I can't really see any point.
I'll close by saying I would not go back to cable based TV even if it was provided to me FOC.