I read that iplayer can guzzle 600 Mb per hour - even my monthly allowance of 30Gb (which is pretty high by comparison to most) could get heavily eaten by the family using iplayer after the update.

Sure they *could* use it on the PC now, but it will be much more accessible when they can use iplayer sitting on the sofa.

Will there be any way to block the use of iplayer (pin protect it ?), limit it, or at least see how much data the HDR has downloaded ?

The HDR will not download anything.

Only realtime streaming viewing...

Options to limit.

1. Don't bother hooking up the box to your local broadband network.

2. Also possible it will look so poor the novelty will wear off after one program and they won't use the feature anyway.

3. Or get a smart router that keeps track of traffic.

My "FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270" does..

e.g.


Online Time (hh:mm) Total Data Sent received Connections
Today 8:53 59 MB 31 MB 28 MB 15
Yesterday 23:38 143 MB 80 MB 63 MB 18
Current week 104:31 662 MB 366 MB 295 MB 33
Current month 128:31 959 MB 464 MB 495 MB 33
Last month 743:51 30578 MB 4060 MB 26519 MB 52

Automan.