Considering buying Freeview.....

[osprey]

but have been told that if I'm taping one programme then I can't watch another channel. Is this correct as it seems daft to me and defeats one of the points of having a recorder in the first place. Please help.

[jenky]

This is true of single tuner boxes. A lot of PVRs (the freeview boxes with a hard drive you can record to) have a twin tuner set-up, so you can watch channel 'A' using one tuner, whilst the second tuner records channel 'B'. You can even tape 2 channels at once if you are watching something from the memory you recorded earlier so you may want to think about buying one of those instead.
Just make sure the box is advertised as having 'twin tuners'

[parkesquay]

At the moment you can record analogue and watch digital or vice versa but of course(depending on where you live)this option may not be available in the next 2 to 5 years.
Now if you buy a freview box AND a recorder with built-in freeview than you can watch one digital program whilst recording another. Another option is to think whether you are going to upgrade your TV in the near future(like I did) in which case you buy a TV with built-in freeview and a recorder with built-in freeview and forget the freeview box.
Lots of options.

[strugglin']

I recently bought a USB Freecom digital TV receiver for the computer. If you connect it up to a decent aerial; The picture quality is excellent. You can record to the hard drive as well. I think Amazon.co.uk sell them for �35