Yeah, I tried his advise and my dishwasher is a bit better but nowhere near cleaning pots properly if something was cooked onto them. We tried half a dozen different detergents (powders, pods, and liquid), putting detergent in the tub directly in addition to the little door, harsher wash cycles.

I can also smell rotting on dishes once clean but wetted if we run anything through with cat food on it (though few other people around me can smell it unless it gets really bad). I can tell a week later if we ran cat food through the dishwasher because I'll pull out a cup and fill it with water and then smell rotting halfway through my drink.
No the dishwasher doesn't have anything stuck in the filter. Yes this still happens immediately following a couple cleaning cycles according to the manual's instructions. No including vinegar in an upright cup doesn't change the behaviour but it does eat through our pot bottoms something fierce. The problem completely goes away if we soak cat food dishes beforehand and make sure there are no chunks of cat food that go through the dishwasher with no changes to anything else.

The dishes are clean enough to eat off but they are not as clean as if I washed them or paid special attention when using the dishwasher. Often the pots have residue / calcium / burnt on food bits left. Cutlery periodically comes out with dried food stuck on random parts of it even if the dishwasher wasn't very full to begin with.