Finally made the switch from the old digital STB to a T-Box.  Didn't want to but it's required as part of the cable package now.

The installer had kittens when he saw the mess of wiring behind my TV which supports the TV, PC, PS3, Popcorn Hour, Sony BD player, Google TV box and VCR(!). Anyway to his credit he got it all going and now I can compare the picture between Freeview and the T-Box. While watching TV3 news tonight it was quite apparent that the T-Box picture was darker than the Freeview source. I can't adjust the brightness because it then makes all other sources too bright and there does not seem to be an adjustment on the T-Box for picture brightness/contrast. Are others experiencing this or is it just my TV (Panasonic 60" plasma).

The non Freeview channels still look terrible e.g. Food, Discovery etc. Having the T-Box and HDMI versus composite video to the TV has not made much difference!

But one nice thing I discovered is that the IR codes for changing channels on the old digital STB are the same as for the T-Box. That means my GBPVR setup still works for blasting channel changes to the STB without having to learn new codes.

One might ask why I am still recording externally rather than use the T-Box. Well it's because I want to watch the recorded content anywhere on the network, not just from the T-Box at that TV.