Search results for: “Whitehaven”

Tonight at 2am THIS SWITCH is going to be turned off, ending the BBC 2 transmission and marking the start of the UK turning off it’s analogue TV service.

As you can see, the jolly wag engineers have wished it a fond goodbye, by draping bunting over it and the BBC analogue rack that is being decommissioned.

The two shiny new racks (see below) replacing it, will, after some swapping of rather large coax cables, take over pumping five digital channels in the space that is left by the analogue channel going dark.
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I was knocking around Whitehaven yesterday afternoon after a journey that started for me on Sunday evening when I left the Isle of Wight.

As I’ve come nearly the full length of the country to cover something that could, if we were a less caring publication, be done from behind a desk with a hot drink in our hands, I thought it would be worthwhile giving a break down of why Whitehaven has been chosen for Analogue switch off/ Digital switchover/whatever you want to call it.
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The details of how Whitehaven will switch over from Analogue to Digital are starting to come out.

It’s quite an interesting approach that’s worthy of a little attention, especially as this will form the basis for the approach for the rest of the UK.

Lots of local press have already become involved in informing local residents about the forth coming changes.

This will be added to by sending a letter to each of the 25,000 households in the Whitehaven area to give them details. In there will be details of the Help Scheme for the over-75s, those with disabilities, and blind.

Those qualifying will benefit from a one-off subsidised fee of £40, unless the households receive income-related benefits, in which case assistance will be free.

Starting in May, the awareness of the TV watching residents of Whitehaven will be further raised with captions appearing on their current analogue channels, warning them of the impending switch off of the analogue channels and the need for them to change their equipment if they want to continue watching TV.

As announced, analogue BBC2 will be switched off on 17 October between 2-4 am, freeing up a chunk of analogue frequency for digital use.

The process is slightly more complicated than first appears, although the effect of the actions will remain the same.

Analogue ITV1 will be switched over to the frequency currently used by analogue BBC2, which will become unavailable.

This will leave ITV1’s frequency available to be used by the first digital mux, which will provide three full time stations BBC1, BBC2, BBC News 24, with CBBC and BBC Three sharing the same frequency, switching between the two at 7pm daily.

Summary – For the price of one analogue TV channel (ITV1), four digital TV channels will work in its place.

(BTW we think DigitalUK should be ashamed with themselves at referring to the date as October 17, they are after all a UK Government body. This is the UK and dates are referred to with the date _before_ the month. The UK isn’t the US)

During this time, ITV1 will slip a little from button 3 on their remotes to button 2 – previously occupied by BBC2. A possible source of some confusion for Whitehaven residents, but reducing it to a minimum.

Four weeks later, the other analogue channels will switch off, making space for ‘at least’ 18 channels including ITV2, E4, BBC Four and some digital radio channels all via their TV aerial. There are a number of channels that are available in other parts of the country that won’t be making it to Whitehaven (detailed three paragraphs in).

We’ll keep our eyes and ears open to monitor the success of the process.

(Update: Details of the switch over process)

Today the date of the start of switchover to Digital TV of the first English town was announced as 17 October 2007. Being cautious types, they’re only going to be switching off one analogue channel to start, BBC 2, with BBC1, ITV and Channel 4 going dark over the rest of the month.

Back in June last year, we heard that Whitehaven was going to be the first town in England to switch off their analogue signal to be replaced by a purely digital service.

Whilst the majority of the channels, including all of the public service ones, will be available via DTT (Freeview), there are a number that won’t. Film 4 won’t be available, but Film 4 +1 (the same, but delayed by an hour) will be – no great loss there. Other missing channels will be a number of shopping and adult channels – a loss for some.

Whitehaven follows analogue switch off which started in Wales, specifically Ferryside and Llanstephan, back in March 2005 and four months later was judged to be a success.

Whitehaven, Cumbria, has similar characteristics to the previous Welsh site – pretty self-contained with the sea to its left and a jolly big mountain on to its right. Areas like this (Google Maps) are chosen to minimising the impact on the surrounding areas.

The official figures for preparedness do present a few hurdles for them. Only 73% of the Wighthaven households have the equipment to let them receive Digital TV – be that via Sky or Freeview. That leaves over a quarter of them still exclusively on analogue.

Photos of Whitehaven