I recently bought this box for my parents and I have to say its a godsend. There is a minor question mark on picture quality but this could be entirely down to the poor quality broadcasts on freeview compared to analogue broadcasts rather than the box. I watched the Liverpool FC v TNS game on wednesday on ITV2 and there were times when the players were square blocks! It was a shame I couldn’t switch to analogue to do a direct comparison. (The cynic in me would say this is due to the imminent launch of HDTV over here..).

So anywhay, why is it such a godsend? Well did it ever annoy you that recording digital broadcasts stopped you from watching another channel if you did not have a second freeview box handy? The box comes with 2 freeview receivers built in so you can watch one while you record on the other – of course this is a feature that is already available in analogue solutions but nothing like playing catchup! It makes explaining usage to people much easier! On top of all this it has a 40GB hard disk which is fine for my prarents (And supposedly can be modded to 120GB – useful!), so it has the ability to pause live broadcasts.

The key thing – it is easy to use – surely the number one pre-requisite!

now if only Freeview did interactive properly..

[update] I would provide a link to thomson’s own website for this product but to be frank their website is awful and I could not find it on there.. try and find it yourself at http://www.thomson-europe.co.uk – good luck!