My dad had this for a while. I'm pretty sure he used it as nothing more than a telephone. I believe he only bought it as it was cheap. Free would not have been cheap enough IMO.

Can I ask what's so bad with it?

I was never a fan when it was first released. Crashing boxes, lack of HDMI support, etc. I didnt think it was too bad nowadays. On demand stuff comes down instantly for me and the crashing has stopped. 1080i over HDMI seems fine too.

Maybe its just because I've never used anything better?

Are you on the silver Phillips box or the black Pace box?

It's mostly the missing features that make it good like proper live streaming and the i-frame transmission for instant change for channels (so you don't get the black/blue screen like on sky)

I had the BT "Togo", which was a HTC of some description. The battery life was so bad they issued a big fat battery and lid that kinda ruined the look of it - it was like a blackberry with a really fat backside. Things weren't helped by the fact that it ran on Windows Mobile.

The white BT homehub had trouble staying connected to more than one wireless device at a time. Ethernet was a bit iffy too.

BT really shouldn't do electricals - they should concentrate on picking our ADSL speeds up out of the gutter.