The change from analogue to digital carries plenty of hidden costs
Whitehaven took its place in broadcasting history last week by becoming the first place in Britain to start switching over to digital. The process began at 2am on Wednesday, when the analogue BBC2 signal, 43 years after the channel launched, was shut down. Next month the Cumbrian coastal town's entire analogue TV signal will be switched off.
The 2,000 households in the area which are still watching analogue have until November 14 - less than four weeks' time - to convert to digital or lose their TV altogether. It is a two-step process - think of the loss of BBC2 as a shot across analogue bows - that will be repeated across the country in the phased switchover culminating in 2012.
Bombarded with information by Digital UK, the body responsible for overseeing the switch, an estimated 92% of Whitehaven residents had converted their main TV to digital, significantly higher than the national average of 84%.
The number of UK households with digital TV was almost 21.4m by the end of June this year, the latest period for which figures are available. That means there are still 4m households watching analogue TV on their main set.
But the "analogue gap" is closing fast, with an additional 944,200 homes buying into digital TV - 80% of them choosing Freeview - in the second quarter of this year. Were such a rate of growth to continue, Digital UK's challenge looks like a walk in the park.
Except it won't, of course. The task of persuading people to convert to digital inevitably gets tougher as the number of remaining analogue homes gets smaller, with ignorance, affordability and reluctance to change among the factors playing their part. Of those watching digital on their main TV set, 9.1 million were doing so on Freeview, 8.1 million were subscribing to Sky, and 3.1 million to Virgin Media. Another 945,000 viewers were watching on free-to-view digital satellite.
But households' "main" TV set is only one part of the digital switchover challenge. What about portables? The average UK home owns 2.4 TV sets, with around 35m "secondary" sets in the kitchen or the bedroom, a total of 60m.
The switchover rate among secondary sets is much lower - around 30% - with more than 10m converted to digital via Freeview, Sky's multi-room option, or a second cable set-top box.
Retailers joined forces last month to boost sales of small-screen digital TVs. Nearly 2m smaller sets (with screens of less than 26 inches) were sold in the first seven months of this year, of which 85% were analogue. So while 84% of homes said their main TV has been converted to digital, only 50% had converted all of their sets to digital.
A hidden cost for viewers of digital switchover is replacing their analogue video recorders, which are unable to video one programme while watching another on digital. The alternative is an upgrade or a personal video recorder (PVR). Nearly 30% of all Sky customers - 2.4 million - subscribed to its PVR, Sky Plus, in the second quarter of this year, while almost 167,000 Virgin Media customers were using its PVR service. Freeview PVRs, including one provided by its pay-TV service Top Up TV, are also available.
But the viewing public remains largely ignorant of the VCR issue - at the end of June this year nearly two in three people did not realise they needed to update them. So what happens next? Border will be the next region to have its analogue signal switched off, beginning next year, followed by the West Country and Granada ITV regions in 2009; Wales in 2009-10; the West, STV North and STV Central in 2010-11; Central, Yorkshire and Anglia in 2011; and Meridian, London, Tyne Tees and Ulster in 2011-12.
As analogue TV shuts down then Freeview's coverage across the country will expand. In Whitehaven, none of the digital terrestrial channels were available until last week. However, even when switchover is complete, only nine in 10 households will have permanent access to the full range of Freeview channels. One in 10 homes, like those in Whitehaven, will receive 20 channels instead of about 40 (three out of the six digital terrestrial multiplexes) plus digital radio.
There will be a pause before the Border switchover while Ofcom, Digital UK, broadcasters and the government digest the lessons of Whitehaven in a formal review next year.
"We would hope to publish a report by the end of the first quarter next year and share what we've learnt with other people," said Ford Ennals, chief executive of Digital UK. "But I have never seen [Whitehaven] as a test - this is part of the programme."
guardian
