Just have HC installed a few days ago, happy in general. I have a few comments:

1. The changing over of channels takes too long. It takes 2 seconds for the TV to respond after pressing the button. When it responds, the whole screen freezes without sound for a second and finally changes to another channel.

2. I like the my favourites function especially for saving music videos. But there is no way to get the whole playlist playing all at once. There is random playing but there is no option to play in the order I want.

3. The manual seems a bit too brief.

4. Tried to 'teach' the remote control to use other TV functions as said in the manual but still can't get it worked. Volume button still not responding.

5. The surface of the set top box got to quite hot after a while, are we supposed to switch it off every night?

2. On 'My Music Favourites' press blue and there is an option to play all your saved videos in order.

Cheers, will try tonight.

If you look here http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...t=teach+remote it might just help with this problem.....

As for the other points, yes it's a bit on the slow side at the moment (this seems to vary with the time of day...I think it's mainly down to the level of demand on their servers) - and no, you shouldn't need to turn it off at night.

you may want to turn the box on its side. I remembering reading a thread that someone had a problem with their box overheating and was told to stand it on its side, which solved the problem

yep changing of channels sucks!

if you think about changing channels as clicking on a website (which technically it is) then its not that bad really.

IF HC only has around 10k subs and the servers are struggling what happens if they actually get some real penetration (say 0.25m to 0.5m)?
Is there a line contention issue brewing?

I don't think "struggling" is the right term here. Channel switching delays are noticeable, but will probably even be noticeable if you were the only subscriber right next to the exchange.
I agree it will be interesting to see how well the system scales, though.

Channel change time in not affected by the load on the system - they happen in the DSLAM which is a 1:1 connection to the set top box. My experience with HC is that channel change times are variable and dependent on how you access a channel....using the channel up/down with the ok button seems to be fastest.