A million TV's go dark. The quality in programming is not noticed.
A million TVs to go dark across London
Next week analogue TV will be switched off across London, knocking out an estimated one million TV screens which haven't made the jump to digital yet. The estimate comes from Digital TV, the body appointed by the government to hold our hands through the transition, and most of them will be in back rooms and bedrooms as almost …
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Thursday 29th March 2012 09:42 GMT Ragarath
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Ahh I can see why Londoners might have a reason to be obsssed with it, judging by your attitude at least.
Not living there myself I could not tell you what many of them think. So you might need to try again at insulting me because you though I was one.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 16:30 GMT JDX
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
"Never met anyone from London who isn't obsessed with other parts of the country having a chip on their shoulder.
Everyone hates London because it is a shithole lived in by shit people."
No chip there at all. Now where's that Michael McIntyre sketch...
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Thursday 29th March 2012 10:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Population of Yorkshire is about 5 million.
Population of London is about 14 million.
There was lots of publicity for the first switch offs, and there is publicity for this one since it impacts so many people. All the ones in between were not news worthy outside of their own areas.
There will probably be a lot of publicity for the final regions that switch.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 15:24 GMT CD001
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
According to the Office for National Statistics the population of the London metropolitan area is 13,709,000
... I assume then that the "metropolitan area" does annex the home counties then, since the very same ONS puts the figure for Greater London at about 7.83 million people.
In the same way that Greater Manchester seems to contain about half of Lancashire (Manchester itself has a population of about half a million, whilst Greater Manchester is somewhere over two and a half million). *shrugs*
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Thursday 29th March 2012 19:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
I was talking about the London Metropolitan area, which is more or less the area affected by the switch-off. You can find the population figures here:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk--england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2010-population-estimates/rft---mid-2010-population-estimates.zip
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Thursday 29th March 2012 11:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Not a South East news bias. A London story that is all. London is not "The South East", it is only a small part of it. Though, to Londoners, it is a major part.
From where I am in Brighton, London is positioned "In the North". So should I be complaining about a "Northern Bias" as there was no reporting of our TV switch over during March.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 13:46 GMT Gav
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
London turning off analogue TV has absolutely zero impact on the rest of the planet. It may be of marginal interest to some, but as an event it is neither new or unusual. In short; not news.
Yes, there are lots of Londoners and lots of them will be readers of The Register, but I'm betting they already knew, having been told by their more local news sources.
So I don't get why this was reported here, and a "top story" into the bargain, unless it was written by someone who either thinks everything that happens in London matters to everyone, or has been blind to events in the rest of the UK.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 12:39 GMT CD001
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Wouldn't we all be better off if we just put up a wall around the M25 and lock all the bankers, politicians and other assorted B-Arkers inside to play politics with each other and leave the rest of us out of it?
Filling the interior of that wall with say, tapioca, afterwards is optional of course.
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Friday 30th March 2012 11:50 GMT Tom 38
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Would you be better with a wall around the M25? No, you'd be skint.
In fact, lets stop fucking about with this silly "Devolve Scotland" question. London, East Anglia, South East, South West and parts of the Midlands sounds like a perfectly fine country to me, we'll have higher GDP per capita, low taxes, full employment, free education and comprehensive welfare.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 16:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
Whilst I wholeheartedly agree about Londoner's ignorance of the outside world, I do have to pedantically point out the the World Series is so called because it was originally sponsored by "The New York World" newspaper.
Right, I'm off to get some coal from the bath and fly my whippet...
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Friday 30th March 2012 14:41 GMT we all know how irritating it is having to interact with the shopkeeper in any way
"Londoners who don't care about the world outside the M25"
That's because once you are in London the roads are so shit you can't get out. And if you do finally escape to the M25 that's a car park. But at least at that point you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This analogue switch-off thingy is just like the poll tax -- try it on 'them out there' first to see if they squeal. Well the number of channels increased, and the quality certainly didn't get better, and we couldn't be bothered to squeal because we found something better -- the Internet.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 16:31 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: South East News Bias ? - Nahhhhhh.......
"Don't tell Tyne Tees or the UTV region, where switchover doesn't occur til september/october."
Yes, was also about to post that too. One wonders if that will be a national newsworthy event as the last of the switch offs?
Pint. Because it's hot. There's no jobs on today so I get a day off.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 09:32 GMT TRT
Well...
I believe that it's BBC2 that goes off and ITV moves onto BBC2's frequency, so ITV's old frequency is then clear for the new MUX, then...
it's all very complex, but the fact that they HAVE to keep ITV going for as long as possible, above and beyond the vastly superior BBC2 programming, just gives me more cause to lower my head in shame.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 10:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
More power != better picture
"after which the Freeview transmitters will be able to increase the power delivered to 400,000 Londoners, so most viewers will get a better picture rather than no picture at all."
It's not the power levels that makes freeview look shit, it's squeezing too many channels into too small a bandwidth; instead of flogging of the spare spectrum they should be using it for better picture quality...but there ain't no money in that
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Thursday 29th March 2012 10:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: More power != better picture
True it'll still look compressed but with digital TV there is no "snow", it's either working or it stutters/judders and artifacts badly to make something unwatchable.
In NW London I will be please at the boost in strength so I won't need so many boosters to get my 2 media PCs and TV signalled up with Freeview HD smoothly. Hopefully having to use thick heavily shielded copper/gold cables will also become less necessary.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 12:16 GMT Wize
Re: More power != better picture
I remember when I still had analogue. The picture was much clearer than any standard def digital signal due to the compression. Things don't fade between light and dark, it has massive chunky steps. But I suppose thats one way to sell the HD by throttling the SD down to a nasty compression level.
Tuning in a TV on the move is a bit more tricky with digital. Hired a campervan and toured the UK a few years ago. Got a directional antenna and a cheep freeview box for it.
In areas where there was analogue, you tuned the TV till you got a bit of picture, moved the antenna till it got better and tuned it in a bit more. Picture might look fuzzy but you can still watch it.
Digital was a whole lot more fun, since you need a good signal to tune the box but you cant work out where the good signal is till the box is tuned. Needed to go online, find where the nearest tower was, find yourself on a map with GPS, work out compass bearing...
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Thursday 29th March 2012 10:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
More than just London
There are people who live a good distance outside London who hate the place just as much as 'them up north' AND will be affected by the switchoff.
I'm 30+ miles from Crystal Palace (Hants/Surrey border) but I get my Terrestrial TV signal from there.
We have had a lot of warnings about the re-tuning. Even my 90yr old Mother has had detailed instructions given to her about how to re-tune her TV.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 12:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
But Will Digital Start To Work?
On everything except BBC the recent digital reception has been dark for much of the evening. If you want to watch TV at all you had to go analogue.
With the analogue switch off the digital power will need a huge increase.
Can they also switch off some of the dead heads making the programme choice, (it appears that many are based outside of London, is declining quality related to distance from civilisation?
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Thursday 29th March 2012 13:05 GMT Roger Kynaston
London != || == civilisation
I live in a bit of London (quite close to Crystal Palace transmitter). Great place to live. Yorkshire is also great though I have never lived there.
Not all Londoners only see things inside the M25. Not all those outside never look inside the M25. it does bug me when so many people are rude about London but then don't listen to you when you explain that it is a place I like living in even it they don't.
As to the article. Who gives a toss anyway. Nothing on TV these days except perhaps BBC4 - soft middle class southerner credentials showed there!
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Thursday 29th March 2012 13:48 GMT RyokuMas
TV Tax...
And here it is - "Buy a freeview box for £(whatever) with (whatever)% VAT going to the government coffers"...
No thanks. Bastards have already taxed me off the road with their great petrol rip-off.
I'll be watching what little there is that's worthwhile on iPlayer, thank you very much.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 18:03 GMT Andus McCoatover
Ahhh, Sutton Coldfield...
Grief, being shown around the old 405-line TV transmitter as a teenager.
Thing was stuck together by duct-tape. I remember seeing an old resistor (not colour-coded as was, but coded with rings and spots - wartime stuff). It was hanging in the air, tied each end by a bit of twisted wire...Made me proud to get home, switch on my old monochrome 10" Murphy, knowing the signal I was watching was going through that resistor, 20 miles away.
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Thursday 29th March 2012 21:25 GMT The answer is 42
Don't matter to me..
Crystal Palace is the one I can't get .. My aerial (in Leicestershire) points at the local East Midlands aerial at Waltham, about 25 miles away, but I get South Yorkshire / Lincs and Granada as well. Central Tonight, Calendar News or Granada Reports (in HD) are my choices. The auto-tune defaults to South Yorkshire!
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Thursday 29th March 2012 22:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Power increases and Digital UK
To correct the writer - the name of the organisation is 'Digital UK', not 'Digital TV'.
And to the other anonymous coward above, regarding poor reception of digital terrestrial over the last few weeks... well, you may have a specific problem, but there's also been exceptionally high pressure weather.
Two things will improve digital reception at switchover: a) the digital channels will move to the old analogue frequencies, which are not 'squeezed in' so much and b) allow for much higher radiated powers (in the scheme of +10dB, i.e. ten times the power).
So you'll find the situation greatly improved, hopefully...
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Thursday 29th March 2012 23:02 GMT P. Lee
BAH!
Am I the only one who is outraged by the fact that the government has taken something that is free (spectrum) and turned it into a cost item which will be passed onto the general (TV-owning) public?
If that isn't taxation by the back door, I don't know what is. What is the point of the government "having more money" when the only ones paying for it are the UK public? Why not just increase tax a little bit and save the cost of the auction?
How about allocating spectrum based on merit?
Now, where's that magnet link for Dr Who?
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Friday 30th March 2012 06:53 GMT Tim S.
In America...
In the U.S., most average people are still confused about digital TV. Since the analogue switchoff, people think regular TV received with an antenna no longer exists. When they see a TV station received via an antenna, they assume it is coming from a satellite. *sigh* They also do not understand that vintage TV antennas will still work with digital receivers (as long as the antenna wire is connected to the receiver with a 75-ohm connector). Manufacturers are part of the problem as they make money off people's ignorance, and sell antennas with phrases added to the packages like "digital ready".