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By Sarah Modlock
When do I need to be ready? This varies depending on where you live but nothing will happen until next year. Unless you live in Whitehaven and the surrounding Copeland area of Cumbria. This will be the first area to experience switchover and it will begin on 17 October this year when the 25,000 homes here will lose BBC2, followed by other channels on 14 November. The two-stage process will then be repeated across the UK until the switchover is completed in 2012. A range of help will be provided including letters sent to every household in the run up to trhe change. For those aged 75 and over and people with certain disabilities, free digital equipment and installation is on offer. Digital UK - the organisation leading the change - is also working with local charities and volunteers, led by Age Concern, to provide practical assistance to those who fall outside the scheme, such as pensioners under 75. A new TV and radio campaign has been set up, including sponsorship of Channel 4's Countdown show, and a schools scheme providing primary teachers with a range of switchover-themed materials linked to the National Curriculum. So if you get stuck at any point, ask your children. The whole of the UK will follow the same process as the Whitehaven area which will begin with captions on TV six months before the switchover is required. These will alert viewers to the need to switch to digital by a specific date. In the early hours, six months later, BBC2 will stop working and the first group of Freeview digital channels - BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC News 24 and CBBC - will become available. During this transitional stage, analogue ITV1 will move to button two on remote controls to make way for the first group of digital channels. Around a month later - again on a specified date - the remaining analogue channels will be permanently switched off. Every home will then be able to receive at least 18 Freeview channels, including ITV2, E4 and BBC Four (if it still exists), plus digital radio, via an aerial. The switchover will then be carried out region by region, with the rest of the Borders the next to have its analogue signal switched off, beginning at the end of 2008. Digital UK says that West Country and Granada TV viewers will be next in 2009 with Wales following during 2009-2010. Viewers in West and STV North will switchover in 2010 with STV Central viewers following later in 2010 and 2011. Central Yorkshire and Anglia TV regions will switch in 2011 and finally Meridian, London, Tyne Tees and Ulster will switchover in 2012. The best way to check which TV region you are in is by seeing which ITV news service you receive or by going to Teletext page 106. Don't worry; you'll get plenty of notice before services in your area are affected, and advice on what to do. Already ready Ofcom figures show that more than three quarters of UK homes already have digital TV. The figures for first-affected area Whitehaven is low though - just 27% of viewers are digital. There is another concern which is about the ability to access high definition TV through Freeview. "Ofcom plans to sell off the publicly-owned spectrum required to show HD signals on Freeview to the highest bidder," said a statement from pressure group HDforAll. "This means that Freeview viewers who have bought HD-ready TV sets will be forced to pay for a satellite or cable subscription if they want to watch HD television." Watch this (square) space. Useful links: Useful links: |
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