Australians keen to plug into digital television have been disappointed yet again with installation problems postponing the availability of rental set-top boxes for another week.

Thorn Australia should have been the first to roll out digital TV this week when set-top boxes and widescreen televisions were due to hit its rental stores.

However, Thorn had delayed the rental rollout until January 22 by which time it hopes its technicians will be fully trained in installing the boxes in the field.

There are already reports of viewers forking out up to AU$200 for a technician to install the equipment - on top of the set-top boxes's AU$700 retail price tag.

"Anyone telling you it's a plug and play box is having you on," Thorn's manager of digital strategy, Jeremy Corfield, told ZDNet.

Tuning problems
With 18 new digital signals to tune in, as well as potential cable and Foxtel boxes to contend with, "there's a lot of leads, a lot of cable and a lot of tuning," Corfield, who had digital television installed in his home on Friday, added.

"There's no way unless you're a technician that you're going to be able to do it."

Thorn will provide the installation free of charge to customers who lease its Orion 32-inch televisions and set-top box bundles for AU$24.90 a week.

However, wanting "to make sure all our guys are trained up all around the country" has delayed the rollout of the rental product.

Set-top box manufacturer Thomson Multimedia attributed possible tuning problems to installed antennae blocking specific channels but MD Laurie Ruddock said, "we've had no negative feedback about installation problems at all".

Set-top delays
Thorn also blames the postponed availability of its rental product on Thomson Multimedia's delay in shipping set-top boxes.

"Clearly there has been a delay in the arrival of the first shipment of boxes," Corfield said.

Thorn received 30 of the devices in early January, however "the balance of 70 have just started to arrive," according to Corfield.

"We didn't have everything in our depots in one go and we didn't want to mislead customers."

Thomson Multimedia denied that there has been a delay in set-top box delivery, claiming that the first batch was a "split shipment".

"We didn't have any delay," Ruddock said.

Although retailers have reported a lack of consumer interest in digital television, "from a rental perspective we're very pleased with [consumer] reaction so far," Corfield said.

"We expect to get through our first lot of stock quite quickly. We can't get enough for the next few months."

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