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Digital UK names date for end of analogue TV era

So long, PAL

Digital UK has warned telly viewers in Britain that they have until 24 October 2012 to ditch their analogue receivers, or equip them with a digital set-top box.

One year and ten days from today, the last analogue telly transmission will be switched off, the organisation said.

By then, the last remaining analogue areas, including London and Northern Ireland, will lose their old-format signals.

Britain has been transmitting TV signals to the public since the BBC began broadcasting a regular television service in 1936. Digital transmissions began on 15 November 1998, but didn't really kick off until the launch of Freeview on 30 October 2002.

Six years later, the campaign to encourage punters to switch from analogue to digital was initiated. ®

Anonymous Coward

So is 24 October 2012 the day the some of the 1% sell some more of the 99%'s property to their mates on the cheap?

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Original Teletext

Was brilliant. The BBC did Telesoftware, Channel 4 did 4TEL and lots of related content from their 80s computing programme 4COMPUTERBUFFS. Then Bamboozle and Digitizer in the 90's when the licences changed.

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Thing I liked about teletext was browing for a holiday during the ads. The TV sound was still there to tell you the programme was restarting. Only a handful of dtvs can do this.

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Re: Teletext

Its quite possible to transmit old style Teletext in digital broadcasts and it is done in many other countries. It is because of the choice of features in the standards picked for the UK that this is not available. Many digital TVs would in fact receive them if they were broadcast and the country setting for the TV was set to Germany rather than UK.

Having both services present (at least on a single channel) would get quite complicated and need some rules about how different key presses should be handled.

To be honest the time of teletext is now ending (as much due to the Internet, mobiles and tablets) but I still regard it as the only seriously successful information service provided on the TV ever launched. The Red button MHEG services main value seems to be access to hidden channels and I also see iPlayer and similar services that are coming to TV screens these days as just methods to access content rather than interactive/information services although they use those mechanisms. People don't really want to interact with the TV (apart from immersive games) but for a long period Teletext was the only source of realtime information in the home. Broadband replaces this need for most people and tablet/touch devices are a more convienient interaction method I don't predict that there will such mass use of TV based information services ever again.

On the main topic of the switchover I'm slightly surprised that it hasn't been accelerated as the progress seems fairly good and the percentage of houses now relying on analogue broadcasts is dwindling even where they are still available..

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Anonymous Coward

hmm. gonna have to buy an analogue TV to watch the switchoff - or find an old B&B in NI that has one!

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