I have had the Thomson for a couple of years now, and have also suffered the usual lock up problems that appear to have have been fixed by the over the air updates... so when it works, it works brilliantly!...
Then recently it started to play up again! with the hard drive being reported as not being present ?..and in addition was unable to scan all channels etc....
After 40 years in electronics and with nothing to loose! I removed the case to see if there was a component fault...So to cut a long story short...I found a 22 microfared 400 volt electrolytic capacitor located on the "switched mode power supply board" very hot and slightly swollen, replacing this with a similar capacitor removed from the power supply of my old redudent VCR cured all the problems! and,incidentally caused the indicated signal strength to increase to.
Apparently the capacitors used on the third party power supply boards, used in Thomson PVR,s and also HD sat receivers, are known to be a problem..... in other word its a brilliant PVR/DVR let down by the company who supply their power supply boards and associated capacitors. Finally If you are not familiar with electronics don't go delving into the power supply boards as the are exposed and leathal mains voltages on some components.... I reckon there must be many of these PVR,s collecting dust that can be put back into service by changing just a 50p component
Jolly Roger, October 2009