Digital Switchover - Chaos Or Calm?

Not quite. Wasn't it announced today that the number of homes with Freeview now exceeds the number without any digital television at all? So now homes without digiital reception are in the minority .

But still, most people only have digital on one TV. The rest will go blank after switch off.

thanks to the wonders of cheapo freeview boxes from Aldi (which are fab btw, far better than the alba **** I have in my bedroom) I now have freeview on 4 of my 6 tvs.

Mind everyone in the street is towing the line taking into account the head of propaganda for the Border switchoff lives over the road. He still refuses to take me up on my suggestion of using my house as a showhome full of plasmas

I think one problem is, with many portable TV's, most people usually use Indoor aerials rather than connecting it to the main external aerial. Now unless you're on your local Transmitter's door step, you haven't got a hope in hell of a getting a good DTT picture, which I think causes some problems.

Everyone I know has at least 1 Digital set in their house, but the rest just recieve standard Analogue broadcasts, how is this situation going to be after switch off? AIUI the signal will be stronger surely?

We're fortunate here as 3 out of 4 of our TV's have Digital, 2 have NTL, one has Freeview, and sometimes the Freeview box (Asda Pacific STB1) seems to out perform NTL, but NTL's content I prefer, but I could live without.

We bought the same Freeview boxes for my Nan and Gran, now they've just got the hang of it, but the major confusion we found here was that it was hard to explain that they could get two versions of the main terrestrial channels, but whenever they'd watch a terrestrial channel they'd prefer to watch it via analogue. Though my Nan swears by hers now, she always has either ITV3 or BBC News 24 on.

I can get a perfect DTT picture on my indoor aerial, and Emley moor has to be some 35-40 odd miles away. My DTT box is one of those "refurbished" Nokia Mediamasters they did after ITV digital went bust. Basically spraying the box silver and writing "Free to air Digital TV" on the front. Still has the On Digital logo on the menus though....... 60 quid from Currys, was cheap for a DTT box at the time.

Mansfield's an odd place for TV signals though.I can get Emley Moor perfectly, but get snow on Belmont, my dad is half a mile up the road and is the other way round- Emley is ****, Belmont is perfect (though still hard to get a DTT signal from on an indoor aerial. Channel 5 is non-existant through analogue as well). I'm aware of at least one person who gets YTV South from sheffield as well (I can get it, but only weak). Whereas most of the local news for us is broacast by Central East & EM Today- yet you won;t have a chance getting that through an indoor aerial. To get Waltham you need a high gain aerial on the roof, and a signal booster, though East Midlands it is the default region on NTL & Sky (NTL give us YTV East and BBC Hull as a 2nd region).

A slight error in my judgement there , though it must depend where you live, as Winter Hill is a strong transmitter, we can get all 5 channels no problem and with a normal rooftop aerial we can get Freeview without any problems either. But we tried it with an indoor aerial twice and all we got was a BBC MUX the 1st time, the 2nd time we got one of the CC/NGW MUXes, and even when you moved the picture froze.

Indoor aerials can be hit and miss though - my aerial has no problems picking up from Sutton Coldfield (has to be a good 10 or so miles from me as the crow flies), my brother had to reposition his aerial and my sister is lucky to get anything at all despite being at the top of the house and trying three aerials.

My DTT box doesn't like it when channels change aspect ratio though, as it rarely gets it right after the change. This is most likely due to the low signal though. It also occassionally decides that the channels broadcast on Mux D (which is basically channels 18-22, 35 and some radio stations) don't exist, although this is usually atomospheric caused in my research.

I've skipped to the end of the thread so if I'm repeating points made already I apologise - I expect to be severly horse-whipped in the PM

I think it's not the government's fault if people aren't ready for Digital TV. People should be proactive in being up to date with events and what they need for this necessary public service. The Daily Mail and other shrieking media outlets are pouring petrol on a fire by saying things like people aren't going to be ready because they don't know enough.

Factoid 1: Digital TV has been around for 10 years now and anyone who hasn't heard of Sky Digital or Freeview really has had their head buried in the sand. For gods sake the ITV Digital debacle was one of the biggest corporate balls-ups in business history and was a massive news story in 2001/2.

Factoid 2: Freeview-capable homes now outnumber analogue-only homes.

Factoid 3: Freeview boxes have fallen in price in just 24 months by 75%. Wheras you had to go to Currys or Comet to buy one you can now get them from Aldis and Asda.

Factoid 4: If the government (Which it will have to do sometime in the future) says right, petrol will run out in 2009 - you have to convert all your cars to LPG - the people who say "Bugger that, I want to carry on using petrol forever" will look very foolish when the tanks run dry. Same situation here. If people who say "I don't want digital TV" refuse to get it by 2009 then their TV viewing habits will run dry.

The socket in my dining room has never really been used so we didn't realise just how shoddy the reception is in there (obv a bad bit of wire going to it). All analogue channels are snowy hell.

Freeview however has perfect reception with the exception of SDN which is missing.

nwt2003 - you're not by any chance pointing at a relay with your indoor are you? Just a thought.

Not quite. Wasn't it announced today that the number of homes with Freeview now exceeds the number without any digital television at all? So now homes without digiital reception are in the minority .[/quote]

You're right - http://www.dastv.co.uk/News/FullStory.aspx?News=92

I honestly couldn't say, I don't have a clue about Relays, when I did have an indoor aerial (have NTL now) it was more or less pointed in the direction of Winter Hill, at the time I had a One For All aerial and when I started using it all analogue channels (with the exception of Channel 5) were very clear, considering the fact the aerial was 'Digital ready', I was convinced I'd get a good chance of a DTT service, though alas this never was.

Hmm. 'Digital ready' RF aerials go alongside 'digital ready' headphones (for CDs) and gold-plated SCART and headphone plugs either as complete misnomers or utterly useless!