The engineer who came out to look at the STB said the brown smartcard is typical for this model of STB.
Turns out some workman had put an axe thru the cable feeding TV to ½ of Bedford
but our box, along with loads of others, wouldn't latch onto the frequency when it all came back. Up til that point we were getting the terrestrial channels (still got a STB with the analogue pass thru
) once the cable was sticky taped back together.