Digital switch rant...slightly

[ColinJ]

In this area the hills are a big factor!

There is no cable TV here and probably never will be. Most of the households in Hebden Bridge don't have direct line-of-sight to the Yorkshire TV transmitter at Emley Moor because of the neighbouring hills so we rely on the local TV tower above the town. That currently only transmits analogue BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and CH4.

There is no Freeview yet because there is no spare capacity to put digital on the local tower. The digital switchover isn't happening here until 2011 at which point the analogue signal from the tower will be replaced by digital.

There are certain places tight up against the hillsides where SKY is not available either because there is a 1,000 foot heap of millstone grit in the way!

 

[meenaghman]

I bought a Satellite dish and receiver from LIDL for 60 quid, pointed it at Astra2 and that gives me the freeview channels. Look at the other sat dishes in the street and point yours in a similar direction, use the beeper to train the signal until its OK. There's a "favourites" menu on most freeview boxes so you could just add the 4 (or 5) channels to that and tell them press fav, up/down arrow to select their chanel, then they wont have to trawl through the rest of the gunk..

 

[Maz]

I bought a Satellite dish and receiver from LIDL for 60 quid, pointed it at Astra2 and that gives me the freeview channels. Look at the other sat dishes in the street and point yours in a similar direction, use the beeper to train the signal until its OK. There's a "favourites" menu on most freeview boxes so you could just add the 4 (or 5) channels to that and tell them press fav, up/down arrow to select their chanel, then they wont have to trawl through the rest of the gunk..

Is this difficult?

 

[marinyork]

No it's a piece of cake maz. You get kits with a noise tracker that make it easier too. Obviously the better the match and less buildings trees etc will get you a better signal but it's pretty easy to get Astra2 and Eurobird1.