Aussies fume over 'frozen' LG digital TVs

Pity poor Australian owners of certain LG LCD and plasma tellies - their big flat screens have begun freezing up during certain digital broadcasts from TV station the Nine Network.

LG told local media it expects to have a solution to hand tomorrow, but for now troubled punters can simply turn the affected telly off, wait 2-3 minutes then "reboot" it, according to the South Korean giant, quoted by Australian IT.

What have we come to when a device intended simply to show moving pictures has to be rebooted? It's no surprise that it does - the on-board digital TV tuner is essentially an embedded computer, after all. But it just goes to show the extent to which these pesky, computing devices running complex, bug-prone software have made their way into once simple, instant-on consumer devices.

All of which can now, in the right - or should that be wrong? - circumstances inexplicably crash. Aaaaargh.

Meanwhile, LG said it had engineers monitoring Nine Network transmissions to determine whether the problem lies in the way the channel encodes its programming and ancillary interactive components, or it's a result of a glitch in LG's decoding and rendering software.

Tellies said to have experienced the problem include LG's 32LC2D, 37LC2D, 42LC2D and 42LC2DR LCD TVs. Affected plasma models include the 42PC1DV, 42PC1DG, 50PC1D, 50PC3D, 50PB2DR and 60PC1D.