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A million TVs to go dark across London
Analogue switch-off is coming
Next week analogue TV will be switched off across London, knocking out an estimated one million TV screens which haven't made the jump to digital yet.
The estimate comes from Digital TV, the body appointed by the government to hold our hands through the transition, and most of them will be in back rooms and bedrooms as almost all living-room sets are firmly digital these days. the living room sets should get a decent signal boost when the power gets ramped up in a month or so.
BBC2 will disappear from analogue sets on 4 April, with the rest vanishing on 18 April, after which the Freeview transmitters will be able to increase the power delivered to 400,000 Londoners, so most viewers will get a better picture rather than no picture at all.
That will also leave another swath of 800MHz empty, ready to be packaged up and auctioned off as soon as Ofcom can work out the best way to go about it. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
