10x power boost for Freeview as London analogue signal cut
Retune your telly
London's analogue TV signal was silenced at midnight yesterday, paving the way for 4G mobile data networks in the nation's capital.
The analogue signal was transmitted from the Crystal Palace station now owned by Arqiva, which runs the UK's terrestrial broadcasting system after a previous government flogged it off.
Crystal Palace's transmissions reach some five million households in London and the South East - around 18 per cent of the population of the UK.
Source: Wikimedia
Today, Arqiva said, Crystal Palace and some 52 relay transmitters across London and the Home Counties will switch to a new "high-power digital system" that will beam out Freeview channels at ten times the broadcast power they were previously sent out at.
That, the company said, will ensure more than 400,000 viewers in coverage blackspots across the region will be able to watch Freeview TV for the first time. The rest of us get better reception, it promised.
But you'll need to retune your kit. So make sure you do so ASAP if you haven't done so already. ®
COMMENTS
I wish there was a setting on the tv so you could turn up the intelligence.
They made one called "brightness" but it appears to be broken.
Now if only they can make the programmes 10x more interesting they could be onto a winner.
"Maybe now I'll actually get to watch ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5."
Don't get *too* excited.
But they've already lost their audience?
When they switched over to digital in our area, the TV is now essentially unwatchable for me. For most people slight fuzziness on analogue is perfectly watchable. But one blocking-artefact per ten minutes is highly irritating. One dropped frame per minute spoils my enjoyment to the point where I don't bother to watch the channel. Not can't, don't.
Instead, now I watch iPlayer (only). The quality is no worse than broadcast, and in fact miles better for anything except the Beeb, but at least I get to choose exactly what I want. ITV or Channel 4, with all their adverts - gone. Not interested at that level of quality.
Maybe I'm weird, but I'm not so sure....... For my parents and all their friends (in their 70's / 80's), this re-tune stuff is beyond them. In their day, the TV repair-man re-tuned the telly. Sure, their son can visit & tune the telly every couple of months. But as far as Mum is concerned, "it's broken again in a month". So, she's not interested in the "value proposition" of TV any more. She listens to Radio 4 FM, and is quite happy. Not as good as the old days of course, with two whole TV channels (in the evening), but really not such a hardship.
Yeah, I'm aware of Virgin - went round to someone's house and saw it. Didn't want to hurt their feelings, because they pay as much in 3 months as my TV license is for a whole year. But it was SHIT. No drop-outs, but the compression is laughable. You can't seriously watch a play, let alone a football match when everyone is made out of Lego. It was like one of those conversations where your friend has just shelled out £12K to have solar panels put on the roof, to save themselves £300 leccy a year, and you have to bite your tongue.
Maybe you laugh - but that's almost all of the population that ITV just lost. The young watch the internet, the old revert to the radio because digital TV is unusable. Remind me, how is ITV's share price doing these days? I just can't understand why ITV let them do it. Group think at its finest.
Re: Better reception?
> At least you can just point the arial a bit of target if you know what you're doing.
Stuff a bit of mortar in and angle-grind the serifs off.
Solid steel mortar-board hat because I bet I made a mistake somewhere.
