Peter - OT I know, but in all the time I've been on Beoworld you've only had the same generic 'Peter' Beoworld avatar. Who is the person in the picture, if you don't mind me asking!?

My favourite is either the Beloab Penta or 5000. Sorry they're not current products :)

Really interesting Craig - great to see another piece of B&O saved from the skip. Hopefully others can learn from this and more MXs can be saved. BTW - on a similar tip - Tim J is fixing up the BM6000 Quad I bought from you, and it should be back with me in a few weeks. That's one rare piece saved from the bin if ever there was one :)

Try searching for the term 'service counters' in the forum. There's a sequence of keys to hit on the Beo 4 that brings up the service counters - hours the tube has been used appears here. Somewhere on the service counter thread is a guide to what's an average lifetime for an Avant tube, so you can see if yours is under/over the average

Chris - is this an RF VCR Avant? If so, you're welcome to borrow my user manual as this may shed some light on what you need to do. I just plugged mine in and away I went when I bought it a year ago, so have no idea what you're actually talking about! :) The user manual is yours if you need it.

I know that sounded a bit thick - but I do know there's only the Irish sea to the west :) As you know, Fliss is from Fleetwood, and I have felt the icy blast off the sea many times before!

That's a real shame Andy. A sad reflection of where we are with the economy I guess. Whilst Lytham is a minted area, there's nothing to the west and it's not a particularly densely populated area of west Lancs, so I guess it was always going to be vulnerable.

My old Sky box had terrible problems freezing in anything but the most perfect weather conditions, and frequently would not even pick up certain channels at all (Sky 3 was a problem I seem to remember). Prior to taking delivery of my Avant, I had the engineer out and he realigned the dish and replaced the box. Cue problem solved and a happy punter.

Craig: Good luck for your exam in the morning. Craig Ta :)

Yep - too much chemistry revision has driven me to distraction. I just hope I don't get homolytic and heterolytic bond fission confused in the morning...... :P :P :P :P My glib response was clearly too quick and ill thought through!