Yeah. I used to have that issue with several seniors. One a neighbor...who would call on occasion when things got messed up. She's passed away now, but I know how that goes. I can solve those issues on the phone about 50% of the time.
My mom, OTOH, does pretty good (82). Sometimes she has to play around a bit, but mostly she's fine.
Too many inputs and outputs on things...get's em all messed up. A "reset to a known standard" for all
devices would help a lot. (TV to input #1 or whatever, cable box on, dvd, cd, dvr, roku, and whatever off).
I think it's time to just network everything. Place it anywhere. WiFi or better. 0 or 1 cable to everything (other than power). No more multi-inputs on TV. Just a network in. TV acts as one possible central controller. Cable companies would hate that. You could have one box and multiple TV's. lol. (but only one active channel per box, probably.)