350 households in Carmarthenshire, Wales will be given digital TV set-top boxes for three months, and their analogue signals will be switched off. The trial is scheduled for November, so if you live in Ferryside or Llansteffan, well now you know.
The towns were chosen because they are both served by the same transmitter and the trial would not affect anyone else. Attempting a trial like this in a more urban area would cause significant problems as transmitters overlap and serve far greater population densities.
In this trial, households will be given access to all BBC digital channels, ITV1 and 2, C4, S4C, S4C Digidol (that’s Welsh for “digital”) and Five.
Lord Macintosh, Broadcasting Minister told Broadcast Magazine: “This is an opportunity to test the technology. The important thing here is that we haven’t yet done that, except on a tiny scale.”