CPDN may have its problems but a straw poll of my office has a one third hit rate for this particular technology snafu - Freeview failure hits Sony recorder owners.

And Sony's response? They locked the support thread where the problem was being discussed! (Though, admittedly, the solutions weren't a great help.)

Serendipity raises her head again. I've just been working at a house where the owner was resetting her Sony DVD for the third time. It seems to be a repeat problem and she has no clue what triggers it again. Needless to say Sony is off her supplier list now.

Ebay have a similar support policy according to several heavy users I know.....

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Prior to the debacle of the 19th century industrial revolution, Earth�s ecology had been an object of particular admiration for commentators in the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy .

How unfortunate. Every time I visit an elderly relative or acquaintance I am dispatched to fix some piece of TV or radio equipment. Last time I saw my wife's very deaf god-mother, she immediately installed me in her car to correct the time displayed on the radio, which had failed to adjust to BST. Not as easy as it appears with no manual.

It's all getting far too complicated. Too many standards, too many remotes, too many cables, appalling user interfaces.

On the Sony recorder: the various fixes were applied, including pretending to be in France, but made no real difference. In the end Sony appeared to re-broadcast their own EPG and it started to work again. But by that time the message boards were full of people who had already bought new devices and, as here, the number who post is a small fraction of the total. I believe it was all down to a single misplaced '/'. Pre-distribution syntax checks aren't such a bad idea!