The Crystal Palace TV transmitter is due to be converted to digital transmission in early April. This will happen in 2 phases the initial switch over will be on the 4th April and the completion stage will be on the 18th April.
What does this mean to Stevenage residents?
Some Stevenage houses will receive London regional TV, others will receive Anglia or other regions. Most other regions you can receive with standard equipment has already switched so it is likely that you have already completed the process (or don't have analogue TV)
If you receive your TV through an aerial on your house roof and you don't have a digital receiver or "digi box" then TV will stop completely on 18th April this year unless you take action now.
If your TV is a less than a year or 2 old it is highly probable that the TV already has the ability to receive digital TV, take a look for a DTV button on the remote control, however, you may need to re-tune the TV if it was not set-up originally.
If you have FreeSat, FreeView, Sky, Virgin or BT providing your TV, you already have digital TV so no action is required unless you have other TV's in the house that are not connected to the main TV, these will need attention.
If your TV is older than a year or 2 old and has no built in digital capability you need to take action now to continue to receive TV after the middle of April. The easy option is to replace the TV with a digital TV connecting to your current TV aerial (Note: If your aerial is very old or damaged you may need this replaced).
If you can't afford to or don't want to replace the TV you can get a "digi box", this requires your TV to have a SCART or HDMI connector, however, most TV's less than 20 years old will have a SCART and TV's in the last few years may have an HDMI (although TV's with HDMI will probably also have built-in digital so check the manual). The FreeView box or "digi box" will tune the digital TV signal and use your TV just as a display.
An alternative to FreeView is FreeSat, this uses similar equipment to Sky TV, however, you are able to receive many of the channels your Sky subscription would cover but not the Sky subscription channels. If your TV is HD ready you can get the BBC & ITV HD channels without the cost of a Sky HD subscription. FreeSat can make use of your old Sky digital dish, if you don't have one then a single 1 off payment will get a dish installed for you.
Other options are to subscribe to Virgin, Sky or BT, however, these will require a monthly payment and usually a year or longer commitment.
To purchase anything needed for digital TV take a look at The Digital Telly Shop - www.digitaltelly.co.uk
If you do nothing, you will loose BBC2 on 4th April and then loose the other channels on 18th April