This is what the government SHOOULD have done by regulation ages ago !
I'm assuming that they aren't dropping all analogue support - only dropping analogue only sets. All the digital sets I've seen have also had analogue, so there's no problem with them being used on analogue (or for videos and stuff) if you can't get digital yet.
If analogue only devices had been banned a couple of years ago then two things would have happened : 1) digital sets would now be a damn sight cheaper as there would be no excuse for a mark up to cover people who want the extra features, and 2) due to general replacement there would be a lot less tellies now needing digi boxes to be added.
But of course, such regulations would require forward planning on the part of government - enough said ?
Someone mentioned HD on freeview. I recon it isn't going to happen. OfCom seem intent on flogging off the spectrum that would be required as soon as the analogue is turned off. HD needs lots of bandwidth (I estimate only one HD channel per multiplex) and the spectrum just won't be there in a few years !
Someone else queried their very strange switchover schedule. Well I suspect that they are one of the corner cases where there just isn't any spectrum available to transmit the digital signal alongside the analogue ones. So they can only turn on the digital once they've turned off an analog channel to make room.
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About time too ...
This is what the government SHOOULD have done by regulation ages ago !
I'm assuming that they aren't dropping all analogue support - only dropping analogue only sets. All the digital sets I've seen have also had analogue, so there's no problem with them being used on analogue (or for videos and stuff) if you can't get digital yet.
If analogue only devices had been banned a couple of years ago then two things would have happened : 1) digital sets would now be a damn sight cheaper as there would be no excuse for a mark up to cover people who want the extra features, and 2) due to general replacement there would be a lot less tellies now needing digi boxes to be added.
But of course, such regulations would require forward planning on the part of government - enough said ?
Someone mentioned HD on freeview. I recon it isn't going to happen. OfCom seem intent on flogging off the spectrum that would be required as soon as the analogue is turned off. HD needs lots of bandwidth (I estimate only one HD channel per multiplex) and the spectrum just won't be there in a few years !
Someone else queried their very strange switchover schedule. Well I suspect that they are one of the corner cases where there just isn't any spectrum available to transmit the digital signal alongside the analogue ones. So they can only turn on the digital once they've turned off an analog channel to make room.