{"id":2015,"date":"2007-07-30T13:27:47","date_gmt":"2007-07-30T13:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2007\/07\/digital_tv_swit\/"},"modified":"2007-07-30T13:27:47","modified_gmt":"2007-07-30T13:27:47","slug":"digital_tv_swit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/digital_tv_swit\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital TV Switchover"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many now know, digital television switchover begins in the UK this autumn with Whitehaven being the first town to go fully digital. Then, starting next year, a rollout<\/a> across the rest of the country begins, starting in the Borders TV regions and ending in London, the southeast, the northeast and Ulster in 2012.
\nRegular readers will know that I’m still a bit worried about how easily this is all going to work. From what I can see, most retailers are still selling the bulk of their television sets without DTT built in natively despite the fact that a TV you buy today is likely to last well past 2012. And just getting a single Freeview box into a home is not enough; consumers need a separate box for each TV and VCR (if they want to record from it), that they have. This means SCART cables and remotes galore.
\nA report today from Zenith Optimedia says that they expect 88% of UK households to have digital TV by the end of this year, and it to reach 100% by 2010. That’s quite a jump given that the percentage was 78% at the end of 2006, so I’m a little suspicious.
\nBut that’s nothing to what’s going on in the States. They’re also turning off analogue TV and getting everyone to switch to digital. The freed up bandwidth is being eyed greedily by all the telecoms companies, as well as Google<\/a>. Obviously the industry is different in the States, with 58.8%<\/a> of homes receiving cable services. On top of that you have to add satellite TV subscribers (relatively fewer of them compared to the UK market), as well as those who’ve already upgraded to a digital terrestrial signal.
\nHowever, according to this Reuters report<\/a>, there are an estimated 20 million households – something approaching one fifth of all households – who still rely on free analogue over-the-air television signals. The US switchover date is set for February 17, 2009. That’s actually quite soon! Less than two years to go, and a fifth of your consumers not ready.
\nCoupons will be available, on request, for affected parties from next January. But even the relatively low sum of $50 or $60 still needed to buy the converter box might be high for families on, or below, the poverty line. Many of these people don’t have medical care, for example.
\nThe situation will be worth watching closely. And as I always do, I’d remind any passing politicians that depriving your constituents of television is never the smartest thing to do if you plan on being re-elected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As many now know, digital television switchover begins in the UK this autumn with Whitehaven being the first town to go fully digital. Then, starting next year, a rollout across the rest of the country begins, starting in the Borders TV regions and ending in London, the southeast, the northeast and Ulster in 2012. Regular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015"}],"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=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}