DIGITALUK CLARIFIES NORTH DEVON'S TV RECEPTION PROBLEMS
October 23, 2009 2:24 PM
"In response to complaints following the 30 September national digital TV re-tune conducted by Freeview, I recently held a meeting with Bill Taylor, Regional Manager, South West DigitalUK," says Nick Harvey MP.
"While DigitalUK are not responsible for the actions of Freeview or ITV they are responsible for overseeing the transition to digital tv. Mr Taylor's advice is that in the first instance constituents should contact DigitalUK's helpline (08456 50 50 50) as his staff are fully briefed on the problems experienced by North Devon.
"He also advised that:
• Nationally on main transmitter reception Freeview should offer around 40 channels, on the relay transmitters there are only 17 channels. The Broadcasters have not seen fit to offer the full programming on the relays.
• Problems emerged because previously digital broadcasts were only available on the main transmitters and not the relay transmitters (in the SW there are 5 MTs and 105 RTs). Nationally only 10% of homes are on relays - but in North Devon it is nearly 50% because of our hilly terrain.
• South Wales completed its digital switchover on 23 September, so when the national retune happened on the 30th many digiboxes in the Ilfracombe area reset themselves to the Welsh Carmel transmitter, as it was offering the strongest signal.
• Retune using 'First Time Tuning option for best results. Search the channels in the 800s for a strong local signal. Manually retune to a local transmitter instead of the stronger signal and switch off the auto tuning on the digibox. Occasionally the aerial may need to be re-aligned to point more directly at the transmitter. In Ilfracombe this is likely to be Chambercombe.
• The loss of ITV3 and 4 was to make space for channel 5 and future High Definition Channels and is likely to be permanent, unless ITV chooses to give one of them precedence over ITV2+1.
"I am currently pursuing all these issues further with OFCOM and ITV."
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