{"id":1075,"date":"2005-04-07T09:19:06","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T09:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2005\/04\/2012_digital_tv\/"},"modified":"2005-04-07T09:19:06","modified_gmt":"2005-04-07T09:19:06","slug":"2012_digital_tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/2012_digital_tv\/","title":{"rendered":"2012 Digital TV Switchover “Unrealistic”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mediaguardian are reporting (free reg. reqd.)<\/a> something that I’ve always believed to be true: that switching over to digital by 2012 is unrealistic.
\nThe report in question from Mediatel Insight<\/a> (which sadly I don’t have access to since the Mediatel subscription I have is only basic), includes a survey amongst advertising industry executives.
\nSteve Hobbs of Carat<\/a> is reported as saying:<\/p>\n

“No government can afford to unilaterally disenfranchise a significant element of the electorate from its ability to receive TV broadcasts”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He does seem to get it:<\/p>\n

“Carat is sceptical that the transition can be achieved within this period without a definitive statement of the government’s financial commitment.”
\n“Ten million homes currently do not have digital TV and many of the homes that currently do have digital TV also have legacy analogue sets that will require digital facilitation or will otherwise be made redundant.
\n“Given that about 70% of the current 10m analogue-only homes have at least two sets that means at least 17m sets will need a \ufffd50 Freeview decoder. Many homes will also require an aerial upgrade and scart connections to recording devices.”
\n“The total cost of upgrading these 17m sets alone is potentially \ufffd100 to \ufffd200 each. The likely return from the sale of the analogue spectrum is currently estimated to be less than \ufffd2bn.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then goes on to note that the change from 405 to 625 lines took 20 years.
\nMy take on this issue remains that for digital switchover to take place, ALL equipment currently on sale should be compatable with digital already. If I buy a TV set today, in 2005, in Wales, the Borders region or the Westcountry TV region, then according to the Ofcom timetable<\/a>, my brand new equipment could be defunct in as little as three years’ time.
\nTo make my new set work beyond then will require getting an additional box wired in with hassles of extra remotes, and another appliance requiring power which also leads to an overall increase in power consumption (kind of ironic at the same time that the government Energy Savings Trust<\/a> is in the middle of a campaign to get us to reduced our appliances power consumption).
\nOf course that Ofcom timetable isn’t yet official, but I look forward to our new government letting the electorate in those parts of the country know that they’re about to be disenfranchised from their TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mediaguardian are reporting (free reg. reqd.) something that I’ve always believed to be true: that switching over to digital by 2012 is unrealistic. The report in question from Mediatel Insight (which sadly I don’t have access to since the Mediatel subscription I have is only basic), includes a survey amongst advertising industry executives. Steve Hobbs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}