Entertainment For Lively Minds
Digital switchover, so far
Those of us in Granadaland are due for the digital switchover on November 4th. I can't help but await this with some trepidation.
Lately the signals from BBC channels have got noticeable worse. No other collections of channels suffer in this way. When I search on blog and forum sites, the line from the BBC and others is the that all will be well after switchover when the transmitters can push their transmission power to digital.
Has this indeed been the case elsewhere, in other regions who have been switched already (as I understand it, the Borders, the West Country and parts of South Wales)? Have the problems indeed gone away, or are the BBC and other broadcasters sweeping them under the carpet ?
Similarly my mother, in the Scottish TV area, lives in a flat, with a collective aerial, and she has never been able to get Film Four or the pop video channels (handy for keeping rascally kiddies at bay) and some others. The public powers-that-be do not seem to surveying the premises for which they have responsibility and checking their readiness for the switchover.
I had an inkling that this issue might be a booby-trap for the government in an election year. Maybe I have a suspicious nature but I do wonder when things seem to be going SO well.
What do we know so far ?
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South West
Down here in Cornwall, we were switched over in August whilst away on holiday. On returning we retuned and the signal is...shit.
Previously, our 2 digital TV's had access to Freeview and we got all BBC TV and radio channels, all ITV, all C4, all 5, Sky 3, Sky News and Sports, and various bizarre shopping channels. Now one telly doesn't get anything; the other one gets only half what we had previously, and this with the addition of an aerial booster.
The wonderfull Digital Switchover Call Centre explained that we were lucky to get the reception we had previously, as we are in a "bad" area, and that apart from getting a dish, there is nothing we can do.
All our friends locally who have digital tellies and who used to get Freeview, are in exactly the same boat.
If it wasn't all the Beatles programmes on at the moment, the family would be reduced to Monopoly.
This is my concern also
Googling for info on this in the South-West and top of this list is this
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090608/debt... (last part).
There is is much back-slapping going on in the foreground but the evidence on the ground, at least round my way, is wildly variable.
When I moved into my property three years ago I got Freeview and a new aerial to boot. It was all fine for a while. My first Freeview box died about a year ago (the quality of Freeview boxes is also wildly variable, but lets leave that aside for now), and again was fine but in the last six months has got worse. I borrowed yet another Freeview box but with no improvement.
The ads have it that you can buy something for £30 and all will be well, but this is not my experience, and I am not alone.
Get a dish
Seriously. Sending something as data-heavy as TV in digital packets to an aerial is technically fraught. Factor in the low quality of your average tuner & you're often buggered, especially if you're in a 'poor' area, i.e. most of the UK, apparently. Freesat at a one-off £150 is the cheapest alternative solution. Anyone got it?
Another problem caused by the switch to DVB is the exponential change in difficulty of use of the modern telly for the elderly. My folks are in thir eighties & in preparation for the digital switchover bought 3 new TV's. like good citizens. Almost weekly I get an anguished call that 'The bloody televsion's not working', usually because they've got lost in the EPG, landed up on an analogue channel or accidentally switched to another of the myriad input sources (SCART, HD, AV, PC or, my fave, YPbGr). Ever tried talking a befuddled oldster through a digital crisis when they can't read the labels on the remote control buttons & they're missing Cash In The Attic?
That reminds me of
the period when I spent a lot of time visiting a stroke ward in a hospital.
In the TV/Dayroom, the TV remote control was a presumably specially-deigned jobbie in shiny grey plastic, looking like a cross between a finless 50s Dan Dare spaceship and an anaemic toy plastic trumpet. The buttons were distributed more or less evenly around the curves on one side.
I guess there must have been some sort of logical rationale for it, but everyone there - visitors, nurses, and especially the stroke patients it must have been designed for - cursed at it constantly, hated it with a vengeance, and branded it as unusable. I was inclined to agree with them.