With information about the switchover arriving through pensioners’ letter boxes, many are worried how the switchover will affect them.
For the Berkshire area, people will be receiving their signals from Hannington or Crystal Palace, or local transmitters linked to either of these two.
Whichever transmitter they receive their TV from, nothing will happen until next February (Hannington Meridian) or April (Crystal Palace London) and if they are at present watching digital TV via their TV or a Freeview box, they should only need to do a couple of quick retunes when the switchover happens, nothing more.
If you are a pensioner and watching analogue only channels via your television, you will need to obtain a Freeview box between now and switchover, for each analogue TV, these can be bought very cheaply from many supermarkets or you can contact the BBC help scheme who will provide one for you at a fixed price, although the supermarket route is probably cheaper. Those who at present use a video cassette recorder for scheduling analogue programme recordings, will need to update to a Freeview digital PVR (Personal Video Recorder), available from around £120 instead of a standard Freeview box.
If after trying a Freeview box you are not getting full digital reception, or the pictures are breaking up, you will either need to call a reliable local aerial installer who will check your aerial for suitability and recommend the most cost effective solution, or contact Fix My Aerial.com the BBC help scheme 0800 40 85 913 who will normally allocate a national company to send someone.
