We're now on our third Freeview set-top-box in a little over a year at home, each from different vendors and different price brackets - the only common factor was their demise. One even started to transmit, disrupting our DSL service.During the time each of these was functional, the software in each was, shall we say, "feature rich".

When I spoke to my local friendly TV aerial installer, he was quite unequivocal - he is being called out to people who are having problems which are increasingly the fault of their STB. Several friends have also commented similarly.

While this isn't a representative sample of all vendors, geographies, etc, it has certainly cast some doubt in my mind about the readiness of digital tv for the mainstream. While I  may be happy to put up with these niggles, I would think long and hard before inflicting it on my mother.