After having a cheapo Freeview set top box die, and a Grundig one that keeps cutting out and taking hours to reset itself, can someone recommend a simple, reliable set top box ?

( note – don't need it to be a recorder or anything like that – it's just for a little TV in the kitchen )

They're all a bit flaky in my experience. I have an ageing Thomson that is now 7 years old and working fine. A Grundig that croaked. Bought 2 Sagems for my kids and both failed. It's the luck of the draw, especially with all the over the air upgrades.

Humax seem to have a reputation, but this is for PVR technology. I have two old Pace Pumas PVRs. One i've had for 5 years or so, the other a year. The picture is ace, but in the early days, before numerous code upgrades, these were hopelessly unreliable. At the last upgrade a few years ago they fixed the problems, so I picked up another on Pikeybay last Christmas for £35 – bargain!

Then there are HD decoders just round the corner – I think Sigmatek have one, but check that it has a DVB-2 tuner. Of course, just because a box has an HDMI output, it doesn't mean to say it's HD compliant. It has to have a DVB-2 tuner to decode HD, period.

Good luck!

Going to keep my eye on this as i'd like a replacement for the virgin freeview one, made by tvonics i think, preferably one that can handle a slightly dodgy signal better…

We've had a Sony one for years now and it's never gone wrong. Highly recommended. I think it's a VTX-D800U one.