So here’s the first thing, the TV tuner driver installation. This page is a godsend and according to the article, the latest firmware from linuxtv.org gets rid of the hanging problem.

(fast forward 3 hours)

And I’ve found out that it seems to have done just that, I’ve had it going for about 3 hours now and it hasn’t frozen at all, awesome stuff. installing the tv tuner driver was a breeze with the above site and I didn’t hit a single glitch. I’ll probably get stuck back into it tomorrow and sort out the VFD, which doesn’t work at all, and configure the remote. Which it does recognise, but the buttons are just all wrong. But it’s starting to look pretty good considering I’ve really only spent an hour or so on it.