Freeview customers may face bills of £212 for filters to watch TV.

[paul kersey]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...v-7899834.html

Spotted this today in The Independent. Is there any truth in the story, or is it just the usual newspaper scaremongering ?

[Richard_in_wales]

The government has allocated some funds but I think the 4G providers should stump up any costs to freeview punters. I'm a radio ham and if my equipment interferes with my neighbours TV signals the I have to pay for and use filters, not the people next door (if I had any that is).

[MikeB]

I can't see how the mobile phone operators can get away with making Freeview customers pay for extra equipment - not only is the 4G auction an extremely expensive operation for them (and therefore they can hardly complain about the extra cost), but its something they are going to find extremely profitable. However, I suspect that Freeview (and other parties) are getting their objections (and threats for cash) in early. Once you get an early hit like this, it makes the government and the telecoms companies position that much more difficult.

Just how many people are actually going to be affected remains to be seen - the transmissions are supposed to be going live in 2013.

BTW - The head of Freeview, Ilse Howling has a fantastic name, and sounds like the sort of character Ingrid Pitt would have played...

[agutterfan]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...v-7899834.html

Spotted this today in The Independent. Is there any truth in the story, or is it just the usual newspaper scaremongering ?

I have sent an email to my MP with the link, protesting about this appalling affair. Digital TV was not a choice, we were forced to accept it! Will update if I get a response.

[Wee Sonny MacGregor]

According to, I think, Radio 4's "You and Yours" yesterday the industry will pay for Freeview viewers who are affected, but ominously there was a mention of a residual 10,000 viewers who could not be helped by filters.

[Dame Starry]

According to, I think, Radio 4's "You and Yours" yesterday the industry will pay for Freeview viewers who are affected, but ominously there was a mention of a residual 10,000 viewers who could not be helped by filters.

Allegedly the government has put aside money for the filtering equipment (and let us not forget that is OUR money in the first place!), but NOT the installation costs.

Why is the government so quick to chuck money at a problem that isn't theirs?

I agree with agutterfan - digital TV was never a choice and very few people were actually helped financially by the government in the end.

The mobile company should, surely, have budgeted for all of this - if not, now is the time to impress on them that it is entirely their responsibility. If they don't have the funds to meet it, then they must shelve the idea until they have.

[alan french]

Hi,
I am curious why we were forced to have it. We have been told that we must conserve energy. Digital broadcasting requires more power. According to the BBC. So, what is all this about? I hope BBC DOES stand for British Broadcasting or Broken Biscuit and not Broadcasting Bank Corporation.

Alan French.

[paul kersey]

I know that we did not have to buy a new TV to go with the set top box. However when I placed the set- top box on top of the Video Recorder,with the DVD player player beside it, what with all of the connecting cables hanging behind them there was such a ruddy mess on the TV table that I felt the need to buy a nice flat-toshiba TV , humax box and DVD player to minimise the pile up the corner. Obviously nobody wanted my old equipment so it ended up in a landfill site somewhere. I doubt that I was the only person in the country to do so, how many thousands of tonnes of redundant electrical equipment now fills the tips across Britain?, when we are supposed to reduce the ammount of rubbish we dump and there is still "nothing on the telly".
I would not have felt quite so bad about the whole thing, if all of the new equipment had been made in Britain as we needed a boost to the economy but where has this equipment been made? Not Britain, that's for sure, we no longer have a TV manufacturing industry , do we?

[MikeB]

we no longer have a TV manufacturing industry , do we

We really havn't had one for years, although the final TV didn't roll off a UK production line until 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8222421.stm - although that was a Toshiba! Sadly, British TV production was a bit like British motorcycle and car production - the Japanese could do it better http://www.thevalvepage.com/index.shtml, as the American manufacturers also discovered.

Although no one originally forced us to get digital TV (it was launched as an add on service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...United_Kingdom , you get more channels, generally better reception, EPG's, and now HD TV. To watch it (bar HD) all you need is a decent signal and a £25 box, even on a thirty year old TV. If you want to record and watch using a PVR (and would any of us go back to using a video again?), then prices start at about £120. To put that in context, I found an old bill at my parents not long ago for the video my parents bought in about 1986. With the HP agreement (and a horrible rate of interest), it was £500 in the mid eighties!

It's not just the UK which is going digital - Japan has just switched over, and the US is officially entirely digital since 2009 (they decided to go digital before we did).

Modern flat screens (LCD's) use about half the power of my current CRT TV (and LED's use even less). Of course we now can now buy bigger TV's, so one thing tends to be cancelled out by another, but OLED's seem to be very frugal. Its true that a lot of equipment has ended up in landfill (and some of which would have been fine for years to come, but many people like to do everything in one go), but think of the amount of technology which we've all purchased through the years which has either been thrown away or in your ( and my) loft. Things change, and we've been able to generally buy better, cheaper. And its not the first time we've had a switchover. I'm sure people complained about the new 625 line TV signals back in the early sixties, when they had a 405 line set. Of course by 1969 the 405 sets were basically obsolete, although 405 line transmissions strangely continued until 1985!

As for those 10,000 who won't get filters (and I often take You and Yours pronouncments with a pinch of salt), remember that a lot of people use Sky, Freesat or Virgin/BT as their main way of getting TV anyway, so the numbers affected might be quite small. And I'm sure that the mobile companies will do everything in their power to make sure that as few people as possible are featured in national newspapers saying 'New Mobile's mean I can't watch TV!'. The PR nightmare and its cost is much more than just giving all those affected Sky subscriptions forever!

[Steve Crook]

... And its not the first time we've had a switchover. I'm sure people complained about the new 625 line TV signals back in the early sixties, when they had a 405 line set. Of course by 1969 the 405 sets were basically obsolete, although 405 line transmissions strangely continued until 1985!

They continued to broadcast on 405 lines so that all the people with 405 line sets could wait until they came to the end of their natural lives before they bought a 625 line set

At the time of its introduction the 405-line system was referred to as "high definition", which it was compared to earlier systems

Steve

[Windthrop]

They continued to broadcast on 405 lines so that all the people with 405 line sets could wait until they came to the end of their natural lives before they bought a 625 line set

At the time of its introduction the 405-line system was referred to as "high definition", which it was compared to earlier systems

Steve

There were remote areas of Britain which could only receive 405-line TV in the 80s.

[narabdela]

Digital TV was not a choice, we were forced to accept it!

It's called progress. It's been happening with tv standards since Logie Baird and his Nipkow disc; but people will always grumble.

Only a dinosaur would now prefer Analogue TV to Digital.

[agutterfan]

It's called progress. It's been happening with tv standards since Logie Baird and his Nipkow disc; but people will always grumble. Only a dinosaur would now prefer Analogue TV to Digital.

I'm not complaining about the switchover as much as being asked to pay to filter interference from another source - the point being that digital TV was not a consumer choice, we had to accept it, therefore the onus on compendsation should be on 4GB, not freeview viewers. Does that make sense?

[paul kersey]

I would not say that I prefer analogue TV to digital, but my last analogue Tv + a good quality VHS/ DVD recorder kept me entertained for years. It isn't the Broadcast medium that needed changing, it's the programme quality. I seemed to record more programmes/films on my VHS with 4 or 5 channels than I do now with countless digital channels.

[Steve Crook]

Only a dinosaur would now prefer Analogue TV to Digital.

Don't you like accuracy then? An analogue signal is always more accurate than a digital signal. That's just one reason why analogue is better

Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

Don't you like accuracy then? An analogue signal is always more accurate than a digital signal. That's just one reason why analogue is better

Steve

Always? My analogue signal was terrible

[Steve Crook]

Always? My analogue signal was terrible

Always - when you compare like with like. A single signal from the same source delivered in two different ways. The analogue signal contains an infinite amount of information and thus of detail. A digital signal takes samples of the analogue signal and so only contains part of it.

Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

Always - when you compare like with like. A single signal from the same source delivered in two different ways. The analogue signal contains an infinite amount of information and thus of detail. A digital signal takes samples of the analogue signal and so only contains part of it.

Steve

That I know but since I got a terrible analogue reception and now get an excellent digital one (on an internal aerial too ), the fact that my terrible analogue reception was more accurate wasn't exactly a recommendation for the system. Still, people can carry on mourning analogue if they want ...

[Mr Sloane]

The analogue signal contains an infinite amount of information and thus of detail.
Steve

So you are analogue Steve

[Steve Crook]

So you are analogue Steve

Although my capacity might not be infinite

Steve