IS
They're all different situations.
The disadvantage the UK had was that it was first with terrestrial digital TV but the network wasn't really built to be a permanent replacement. So it wasn't just a case of building a digital network and then switching off analogue: we built a digital network, then built a better one, then turned off analogue and the older digital network!
The other factor is the number of engineers needed to do a switch all at once. Countries like Ireland could just set up a parallel system and then turn off analogue, here a lot of the country had no digital until the first stage of DSO so there was a lot of engineering to do overnight. There's almost 1000 transmitter and relay sites and that's a heck of a lot of engineers needed
The UK is also a lot more dependant on terrestrial TV than other countries like the Netherlands, the US and parts of Germany. They were able to turn off Berlin analogue very early on because so few people were watching it - very different to London.
Also I think we took far too long to do ours. We should have done the whole damn lot in one go, like in the USA, Ireland and Germany.
They're all different situations.
The disadvantage the UK had was that it was first with terrestrial digital TV but the network wasn't really built to be a permanent replacement. So it wasn't just a case of building a digital network and then switching off analogue: we built a digital network, then built a better one, then turned off analogue and the older digital network!
The other factor is the number of engineers needed to do a switch all at once. Countries like Ireland could just set up a parallel system and then turn off analogue, here a lot of the country had no digital until the first stage of DSO so there was a lot of engineering to do overnight. There's almost 1000 transmitter and relay sites and that's a heck of a lot of engineers needed
The UK is also a lot more dependant on terrestrial TV than other countries like the Netherlands, the US and parts of Germany. They were able to turn off Berlin analogue very early on because so few people were watching it - very different to London.
Funnily enough for me that marks the point it started going downhill - the same pre-recorded anno every day with a pre-recorded clock that would often not have reached the right time when the news began or go past the top of the hour, and be chopped down into 14:9!