Ferguson: FDT500

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Comments (11)

Murray, Dartford on October 27th, 2004
Real cheap and does the job. Haven't really seen any other freeview boxes to compare it with but I can't complain with this one. Never had any problems and it seems to change channels, etc quick enough for me.

porl barker darlington on November 6th, 2004
We use this box in our bedroom but we are still waiting for an ota upgrade.ITV 3 has not yet arrived.Otherwise its ok.Also there is no pc usb or rs232 for software download.OurGoodmans gdb2 has this facility.

James Wright, Thornton, England on November 18th, 2004
The box is good now that it has 8 day EPG. I enjoy using it. It is easy to use. IT can be slow at times, but it is good enough for me.

Matt, Clitheroe on January 3rd, 2005
I bought this box in Nov 2003 and was happy enough with it until this Christmas (2004) when the picture suddenly became pixelated on all channels. It's not poor reception as my neighbour's box works fine using my aerial, so it must be a faulty box. Of course, it's now 1 month out of warranty! Bummer.

kevin eyre, sheffield, england on May 26th, 2005
the set top box itself is ok, but when the kids altered the child lock pin code to an unkown number i have hit a series of brick walls trying to find a solution around it. As a result i have not used the freeview for over 12 months. Is there a way round the pin number , if there is then i would be grateful of any advise.

Alex Inkester, East Surrey on June 10th, 2005
I bought this box Christmas 2003 from Dixons for £89.99 it worked fine and i really liked it as well as the fact that you could press the information button twice to be able to get the program details allthough when we got to March it wouldnt work at all it was stuck motionless it wouldnt turn off or move i tried new batterys for remote, new remote and a new AC power lead but all to no sucess but to top it off i had a nightmare getting my refund back from Dixons and i eventually got my refund August 2004.

Josh, Surrey on September 2nd, 2005
Its an ok box, you get what ypu pay for. Remote control feels very cheap and includes buttons that have no use with the box.

Freeman, Cheltenham on December 17th, 2005
BBC3 and 4 died, and the clock started running slow. Then a Reload wiped everything, and it all stopped. Trying to get anything out of the Thomson webiste is hopeless!

Mark, North Wales on January 1st, 2006
easy to learn, but new software messes it up a bit. The "Top Up TV" banners that are displayed when TUTV channels are encrypted are out of date, and advertise E4 and DiscoveryH&L with the old TUTV logo and gnome, even after E4 left the service! Blank buttons on remote are annoying, and the 8-day EPG is quite slow upon loading, and the font size is rather small with the large TV picture in the corner and the bar showing buttons at the bottom. My box now fails to load some interactive services, eg, YooPlay Games (even after MUX move) and sometimes freezes. My current OAD version is 2.7 and is not much different to 2.5. I have previously had reception problems of mux A (all channels blank until a rescan), but that thankfully hasnt happened again since 2.7 was downloaded. All in all, an easy box to learn, but cheap and very un-sophisticated. Would like to see a rename and renumber feature on it.

Thomas Aldridge, Bongor Regis on March 20th, 2006
The Freeview boxes use scart and when you put them into the back they fall out. I've tried 9 scart leads, all brand new!

XL, Shropshire on August 28th, 2006
The Freeview Feruson FDT 500 I purchased for a present, doesn't show the free Film 4 channel, tried eveything, but still no Film 4. When we get upgrades this particular box doesn't automtically update the programmes, other than this problem, it's been a great little machine, much better than one that I purchased at double the price