Digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom
For some viewers it offers much improved reception compared to analogue broadcasts (although these had been entirely discontinued in the UK by 2012), including 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.
ITV initially used their space to house ITV2 (from 7 December 1998) in England and Wales, You2 (later UTV2) in Northern Ireland and S2 in Scotland (now both ITV2), as well as GMTV2 during the early mornings.
Channel 4's nationwide coverage on 'mux' 2 enabled it to be received terrestrially throughout much of Wales for the first time in its history, where previously only S4C had been available.
S4C chose not to carry S4C Digidol and its newly launched digital Welsh Assembly station, S4C2 outside Wales, preferring to sell the space instead.
All subscription services except E4 and FilmFour went off-air on 1 May 2002 after the consortium collapsed, explained as being due to paying too much for the television rights for The Football League.
However, the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode, the fact that at least 40% of homes would need new aerials to receive it, a high churn rate, an insecure hackable encryption system, the cost of having to provide free set-top boxes, and aggressive competition from BSkyB all contributed to ITV Digital's spiraling costs, before shareholders Granada and Carlton called a halt to the venture.
As ITV Digital had collapsed, the rights reverted to the regulator and the ITC invited bids for the space on Multiplexes B, C and D. The Freeview consortium was formed by the BBC, transmitter company National Grid Wireless (known at the time as Crown Castle UK) and BSkyB.
The BBC's second multiplex has allowed it to televise BBC Parliament where it had previously only been available in sound, allowed BBC Knowledge and its successor, BBC4, to stop renting space from SDN for coverage, and allowed for special video screens in its interactive service BBCi, for use during sporting events such as Wimbledon and carrying loops of news headlines and weather, (services already provided on digital satellite) On 11 October 2005, ITV plc and Channel 4 joined the Freeview consortium and in the same year ITV plc also bought SDN and as such they gained control of Multiplex A.
TCM purchased its own slot throughout England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from the multiplex owner, SDN, but rents from Sit-up Ltd in Wales, timesharing with bid tv.
The BBC agreed that the digital television market had changed substantially since 2002, and that Top Up TV probably could not afford the current cost of DTT slots anyway.
These included that Ofcom changes the transmission mode of broadcast on all multiplexes from 16QAM to 64QAM so more services could be squeezed onto the digital terrestrial platform.
It also said that it would use an alternative (MPEG4) codec, which would enable a greater number of channels to be broadcast, but would require the purchase of new equipment for those who wished to receive the new service.
[10] The problem affected a specific range of older units, and was caused by an increased Network Information Table (channel list) exceeding the memory available in some set-top boxes.
DTG licensed suitable equipment to bear the Digital Tick and Freeview Playback Logos[12] to identify PVRs and other devices designed to work through switchover, and to raise awareness of DTT product quality and standards.
The then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, announced in 1999 that the Government's intention was to achieve switchover "between 2006 and 2010".
On 15 September 2005, addressing the Royal Television Society in Cambridge, Smith's successor at the DCMS, Tessa Jowell, announced the go-ahead for switchover in the UK, coupled with support measures to ensure the disadvantaged are not left behind.
[14] On the day after Jowell's speech, an independent not-for-profit company, Digital UK (now Everyone TV), was established to co-ordinate the switchover process.
Set up by the broadcasters and the commercial multiplex operators, Digital UK was required to co-ordinate the project and ensure that the public are kept informed about progress.
The British Government gave Ofcom and Digital UK jointly the task of discontinuing analogue television broadcasting.
On 14 November, all analogue signals were switched off, and the permanent three-multiplex digital service began (albeit with Channel 5 only on the Whitehaven transmitter, until 2009).
The government arranged for the BBC to administer a Digital Switchover Help Scheme to ensure that groups such as the over-75s and recipients of disability benefits did not lose their television services when analogue transmissions were switched off.
Although viewers who lived outside existing Freeview reception areas were unable to test any digital receiving equipment they had bought at this early stage, test-screens on Ceefax (BBC One & Two) and Teletext (ITV & C4/S4C) page 284 made it possible to determine whether they were likely to need a new aerial or a signal amplifier to receive digital transmissions.
Next, detailed information booklets were delivered to all households in the area (including many on the fringe who may have been receiving their TV from other transmitters- hence the importance of the on-screen warning captions).
This "digital dividend"[30] required millions of homes to upgrade their aerials to the wideband type to receive some or all of the Freeview multiplexes.
It is likely that if they are sold commercially, they will not only attract interest, but may be bought for millions of pounds due to the high demand for spectrum throughout most of Europe.
[35] Terrestrial analogue relay stations have been repeating TV signals to areas not covered by broadcaster-owned transmitters since the Independent Broadcasting Authority started licensing them in 1980.
The first digital self-help relay was installed at Ladram Bay, Devon by Stuart Harse and Liam Kelly (broadcast engineers from Bristol).
In 2005, the auction for two new slots on National Grid Wireless multiplex D resulted in broadcasters bidding high prices to gain bandwidth.
BSkyB were the first to suggest such a move to increase the number of channels available within their own share of space using MPEG4 on a subscription service.
[48] The BBC, which ultimately broadcast high-definition television on Freeview in the DVB-T2 format adopted in 2009, initially considered an alternative method utilising spare capacity at night to allow the download of high definition programmes for later replay.
