I would highly recommend the youview service to people who just want to view Freeview and online content from BBC Iplayer and other players.
The box is a re branding of the Humax hdr-fox t2, which in my opinion is a nice freeview box, over all for people who don’t want a paid subscription to sky or virgin this is a good option and would recommend it.
For More technical people you could just get a low cost asus aspire nettop with XBMC+HTS+USB WinTV Capture card…