Analogue Switch-Off Dates Confirmed

Parts of the North of Ireland have never been able to recieve any TV reception from UK sources, having to relying on services from south of the border.

Places such as..?

Area around Camlough and Forkhill.

Indeed. We've got Ms Jowell wanting to turn off 'all analogue signals' without realising that ALL terrestrial TV signals are analogue, and I do recall back in March when that farce of a trial in Wales started along with the proposed switchoff timetable, that one call in a BBC Radio Devon phone in about the South West apparently going in 2008 went like this:

Caller: 'why is the south west first when it's a poorer area with hopelessly incomplete DTT coverage when the south east which is a more affluent area with better coverage'

Answer: 'Well, it's, its' an incredibly...complicated technical process. We've decided to switch off region by region, with the borders being the first and the south west following a few months later. We, we have to make sure we don't.ah....don't interfere with our neighbours in europe, and also with, with neighbouring regions which of course down here would be H..ah HTV West. We have many, many transmitters, all of which need to be converted to...ah..to digital. So, uh it's a complicated thing to do'.

Yeah...he's well informed.

The south East is very poorly served with DTT.
Viewers to the south of the Heathfield transmitter can only recieve 2 MUX's. Even the analogue coverage is poor with no reception of Channel 5 in most of East Sussex

Camlough has it's own television relay of the four terrestrial channels.

Forkhill may not be able to receive the Camlough TX as it's behind a hill and that transmitter is low power, however Newry South looks to be a reasonable bet. I haven't got a coverage map in front of me but given the geography of that part of the country there are remarkably few areas which drop below an acceptable level of reception.

I'd imagine the number of license fee payers affected would be extremely small.

Satellite is of course an alternative and is an option for virtually everyone.

I've obviously missed something... what's DTT then?

I think he's a bit mixed up. What Ms Jowell has actually been saying is that she wants to turn off all terrestrial signals, which includes DTT.

thanks Adam, that makes more sense

I was merely quoting from the first post in the thread.


How would that make more sense? It's a common enough misconception to believe that there is something 'digital' about a DTT signal when the signal itself is still analogue, but I think even Ms Jowell would know that DTT is terrestrial too (although it wouldn't come as a complete shock to me if she didn't).