In order to maximise the availability of a television receiver/decoder housing, the invention enables the download of updates while said housing is being used. In order to do so, when the housing detects that an update is available, the housing allocates itself a portion of the acquisition resources of the update in order to store this update in a housing storage memory. Once the download is complete, the user can either activate the update or carry on using a former version of the housing application, the user thus being able to select a microcode version which is activated by default on switching on the receiver/decoder housing.