tried to record hairy baker on bbc hd so no footie available on itv hd all progs cut off when i viewed bbc hd had to reboot this is really confusing me all i want todo is watch my telly not take a technic exam every time i try to view

If you have 2 cables connected and have done a factory reset with 2 cables (the box should say 2 cables found) then there should be no problem doing what you want and should have been able to record both. (you might get a warning message for a short period just before the box switches to ITV HD). Using one cable and the loop you can't get ITV HD and BBC HD at the same time.