Digital Switchover Tomorrow

[Mafioso]

Right, I'm located in the West Midlands and the full, proper switchover happens tomorrow (20th). I've seen lots of adverts etc. stating that everyone will have to retune - fine.

Will there be any sort of difference, ie. better signal and therefore more channels on Freeview?

Also, on a side note, my grandparents have had a huge Sony tube telly for about 10 years with built-in Freeview which they've had no problems with until the first 'changeover' on the 6th when they retuned and lost all digital channels. I had a fiddle and can't get any either - only terrestrial, which they'll lose tomorrow. Any ideas if they'll get digital back tomorrow? I can't work out why they've suddenly lost it. Could it be that they need a new digital aeriel?

Cheers guys.

[Mafioso]

Hmmmmm that's annoying if that's the case as their tuner is built-in. However, they were hinting at getting a new flat screen tv anyway! Ha!

Now I think of it, when I popped round last week to retune, I did get a couple of digital channels such as ITV4 and Dave, but none of the regular 1,2,3,4,5 etc... Would this indicate that the tuner is too old?

[Mafioso]

TheInternet said:

If you're getting your signal from Ridge Hill they will be turning the wick up from 2kW to 10-20kW, meaning you're reception should improve somewhat.

You'll only get more channels if you aren't getting the full complement at the moment.

Nah we're on the Wrekin and seem to get pretty much all the channels I believe. Was just wondering if it would improve somehow.

[Mafioso]

Yeah there is a noticable difference in the signal now, especially on TVs not plugged into the main aerial.

As far as my grandparents' telly is concerned, just finished installing a new Freeview box and it works perfectly. Suspect that their in-built box was of the 'old type' and can't receive the new signal.

[Mafioso]

Langweilig said:

Is there any difference between analogue and igital transmission? I notice that when I'm watching an analogue channel - BBC1 for instance and then switch to it's digital equivalent, there's one second of a delay between the two. The digital transmission is actually slower than analogue. Odd, since radio waves travel at lightspeed. Explanations anyone?

I'd heard back in the day that the delay is actually caused by the digital box 'decoding' the signals/waves.

[Mafioso]

Hey! Sorry to dig this thread up but I popped round to the grandparents house because they said they'd lost ITV3 in the recent need-to-retune malarkey again.

So I did a retune and BBC2 is showing the channel VIVA! It says it's BBC2 and even shows what's showing on BBC2 but it's displaying the crappy music channel.

Interestingly Viva's coming on its normal channel 21 too.

I did another retune but the same happened again. Any ideas on how to fix this? A quick google's come up with nothing. Cheers!