The Analogue switch off: 2008-2012

What does everyone here think about the timing of the analogue switch off - scheduled to take place from 2008 to 2012.

or to be precise, by ITV region:
2008: Border, Westcountry, HTV Wales
2009: Granada, HTV West, Grampian TV, Scottish TV
2010: Central, Yorkshire, Anglia
2011: Meridian, Carlton/LWT, Tyne Tees, Ulster
2012: Channel


There are several issues obviously - mostly being those without digital TV. They fall roughly into three groups - those who can't receive digital TV ( DTT to be precise) due to reception issues, those who won't switch to digital TV and those who can't afford to.

Trials have begun in two Welsh villages where the analogue signal has been turned off - but every home has been given a free Freeview box for each TV, something that couldn't really be done nationwide.

There is a catch 22 situation in many areas - they can't receive digital terrestrial TV due to interference, but will be able to once the analogue signals are switched off.

Many other areas cannot receive all 6 muxs.

So do you think turning the analogue signal off sooner rather than later would increase the take up of digital TV or should the switch off be delayed until a significant majority have digital TV?


EDIT: I should also add something about digital satellite. Do you think (and if you don't - why not?) that a free to air (and to be more precise Free to View) digital satellite service should be freely and easily available not just via Sky, but in competition to Sky.

I think it's the perfect time. Since Freeview has been introduced, analogue has just been waiting to be shut down. The only thing stopping it is the fact that the freeview signal still isn't available to all parts of the country. As soon as it is, analogue will be obsolete and not needed.

Plus all of the things that make digital useful such as digital services, widescreen etc can not be fully utilised until analogue is gone as it is pulling them back.

I say the quicker analogue goes the better! Yes some people could moan that having to pay for a freeview box would be annoying, but i don't see why! It's only around £50 nowadays and you get the extra channels anyway! We've got to move on.

I think it would be the right time, by 2008 Digital would have been out for 10 years and only more recently the uptake has increased, the more people who purchase Set Top Boxes, the cost goes down. Great example is that when On Digital arrived, it was £200 per box! They became free as long as you subscribed. Then ITV Digital went tits up so Freeview arrived, boxes were now £99 or less, 2 and a half years later the boxes are now as low as £40! (And are bound to get lower)

Though I only have one quabble....

....how are they going to sort out people who use indoor aerials. Guaranteed pratically all households have one TV that is connected to the main outdoor aerial, but many households have other TV's in bedrooms and kitchens, where most of them use indoor aerials. Now based from experience getting DTT with an indoor aerial (I mean a good Indoor aerial like a One For All sort of thing, not a metal loop) is cr*p, you can only get one MUX and even then the picture is horrid.

Now what will happen, I know when Analogue is fully switched off, there is going to be far less interference on screen, which is a good thing. Though how this can affect indoor aerials is beyond me, now I don't think everyone will get an extra outdoor aerial installed, due to the cost.

Or you just choose to go with Sky or your Local Cable company....

I think the 2008-2012 switchover window is ridiculously optimistic, with the order in which regions will be switched off seemingly arranged more for political reasons than practical ones. I don't honestly see that timetable being kept to.

My points are made more fully in this thread

I think it is the right time. Soon Freeview will become available to the whole country and I'm sure they will setup a system so the local relays can pick up and transmit Freeview. Also lots of people have Sky or Cable.

Also, as other people have said, the boxes are becoming very cheap. I've seen them for £20 in sales.

That is exactly why it is happening too soon. All I'm hearing is some sort of sweeping blase comment that 'it doesn't matter if they turn it off in 2008 because Freeview will be everywhere by then' - without many people making such statements having given any time at all to thinking about how this is actually going to happen.

At present, DTT coverage is still very limited, either by it not covering a particular area, or by, for one reason or another, it not being available to a particular group of people (I'm talking blocks of flats and communal aerial systems here). If the switchoff timetable is to be kept to and 3 regions will switchoff in 3 years' time, then I'd expect it to be accompanied with a viable plan for giving DTT comparable levels of coverage to that of analogue terrestrial. If not all 6 multiplexes, then maybe the idea of the mythical 'multiplex 0' carrying only BBC1/2/ITV/C4/C5 should have been seriously looked in to.

But instead, there is nothing more than a vague assertion that somehow DTT coverage will somehow improve enough through a couple of transmitter upgrades and power increases to make analogue switchoff viable - and that's not enough if they expect it to happen in such a short timeframe.


Most of the country is not cabled and virtually all cable TV requires a subscription. Satellite might enjoy theoretical 100% coverage but in reality there are many people who can't get it. As well as that, it's still too closely associated with Sky for it to be a consideration for people unhappy to pay a subscription. And as well as that, even houses which do have cable and satellite usually have only a single box connected to a single TV with no possibility of timesharing recordings or watching something different on another TV. The same is true to a lesser extent (albeit not much lesser) to DTT too.


But it's common these days for people to have 4 or 5 TVs - all of which need a box with analogue gone. As well as that, if you have a VCR or DVD Recorder (and again, it's not usually so much a case of 'a VCR' these days as it is '2 or 3 VCRs), you'd usually need another box for them too, since most machines on the market come with only an analogue tuner. There is of course the option of twin tuner PVRs, but these certainly do not fall into the £20 price bracket you speak of.

And again I ask the question, how is this going to change in 3 years? Short answer, it's not. 2008 will either not happen, or will happen only at the expense of crippling the TV viewing arrangements (or even removing TV all together) for a considerable number of people.

I think it's stupid switching it off, because if people cannot afford to buy Sky then what are they going to do.. I mean I would leave it on not mess around with it


Regards
Lee Penfold

I wouldn't go that far, my point is not that it shouldn't be switched off, it's that it should be switched off within a realistic timeframe, not rushed through.

I do however fear for the santity of some people who seem to believe that switching off analogue TV in this country will bring benefits only second to world peace. I'm also extremely concerned about the technology we are going to be stuck with.

Far from digital TV in this country representing the future, it instead represents the past - the compression technology employed is 10 years out of date now. The technical quality of it is awful and no way will I welcome the day when overcompressed MPEG2 mush is all there is. Wheras other countries have used digital as an opportunity to introduce HDTV, we used it merely to deliver more channels (oh and of course, widescreen, the biggest gimmick since the Austin Allegro's square steering wheel) to a pot of advertising revenue which can't support them, and force the BBC into the position of having to run 8 TV channels with very little money than they used to have for 2. In terms of content, digital TV has brought this country's TV down and down. And in terms of technical quality, the decision to go solely for shere number of channels more than anything else has also brought this country's TV down and down.

After the dust has settled and the government's silly race to end analogue broadcasting has been completed, our TV is probably going to end up a national embarassement as it becomes the worst (technically and creatively) in the civilised world. That's a far cry from the days when our TV had the best technical standards in the world, and arguably the best creative standards too.

Interesting report on last night's Spotlight. Michael Grade had visited BBC South West, and with it had to tackle the awkward issue of the ludicrous 2008 proposed analogue switchoff for the south west TV region.

He was asked (over several questions I hasten to add) is it a good thing to do this (and specifically, is it a good idea that the south west region is tipped to be part of the first round of closures) even though DTT coverage is laughably incomplete, cable doesn't exist outside of Plymouth and the poorer nature of the region means that many people can't afford Sky.

'Yes it is'. He replied. Because there are some 'holes' in DTT coverage in the region (read: it's more a case of there being patches in which you *can* get DTT as opposed to holes where you can't) then apparently OFCOM, who he described as 'sort of the gatekeeper for it' would 'look to, to deal with...with...with the issues in this area first'.

In other words, he hadn't given a second thought to why it is completely implausible to turn of analogue here in 2008, didn't have a single meaningful answer as to how it would happen, and quite obviously, would rather he didn't have to talk about the issue at all.

Good to hear Laurence Reed on Radio Cornwall slate him over the issue at lunchtime though.

I'm wondering if he'll turn in such a spectular performance on Radio Cumbria in the near future.

In my opinion, the analogue system should be kept and Sky Digital should be scrapped. There should be the complete analogue channels, but what with Sky, they should scrap their +200 channels and bring back their better days of Sky News, Eurosport, Sky Sports, MTV and Sky Movies.

Sky does not have +200 channels, more likely about a dozen or so excluding the off-shoots.
Sky Digital, a broadcast platform, has +200 channels.

I say do away with all this electrical malarky. Gas lamps and candles provide all the light we could ever need.