I have not explored this but is there a menu setting that can determine the behavior of the recorder?

One very valuable lesson that I have learned is to establish the level of responsibility early on. Without a doubt, the cable/sat boxes are often the most problematic devices to integrate and I make this clear to the clients. Hell, 90% of my service calls (truck roll and phone) are due to cable box issues. After all kinds of work arounds (voltage sense, menu-power macros, etc...) for discrete power I just quit trying because the level of ease and frustration did not improve with any of the options and neither did the customer satisfaction. That is not to infer that my programming is sub par... I'll put it up against anything out there... it's just that you can quickly get into diminishing returns by trying to do something that was not meant to be done. Think of it this way... you (or your work) are more likely to be judged by creating a solution that does not work well or consistantly than by saying up front that power outages and cable company communications with the box may shut the box down requiring a a simple power button press. The reason for this is that if they pay for your time to create a solution then they expect that it should work and it will always be seen as YOUR problem.

I say put a power button on the screen, explain that they may need to occasionally power on the box OR spec in a battery backup and make some more money :).