Celebrities starred in a BBC trailer for their digital channels

The boxes allow people who have analogue television sets to watch digital programming, such as BBC Four and Sky News, without having to pay for cable or satellite services.

Most set-top boxes, which are made by a variety of manufacturers, retail at �99. Some, however, cost as much as �130.

But the manufacturer of the new cut-price boxes, Lidcom, hopes the price of the boxes will fall to �50 within a year.

Their boxes will be the first to retail at as low as �60, nearly �40 cheaper than the majority of decoders.

A spokesman for Lidcom, based in Surrey, told BBC News Online they were able to cut the cost of the decoders because they used far less components compared with the more expensive Freeview boxes.

100,000 a month

"It's simply a device for free-to-air television, and it does not have the interactivity. It's for people who want a simpler device, or for people buying for second TV, or for their children," he said.

Lidcom, which started only 16 months ago and has only seven full-time staff, hoped to sell 100,000 boxes a month.

More than 500,000 Freeview units have already been sold, but sales are expected to increase even further if the price drops to �50, which the Lidcom spokesman hoped would happen in a year.

The digital boxes feature all of the BBC's TV channels, as well as Sky News, ITV News, the UK History channel and shopping channel QVC.

Backed by a consortium including the BBC, BSkyB and transmitter company Crown Castle International, Freeview replaced ITV Digital, which collapsed due to financial problems.

The Freeview service now has more subscribers than ITV Digital had at its peak, and the Independent Television Commission has said free-to-air digital television is growing much faster than pay-per-view TV services.

The government is trying to phase out analogue TV before 2010.