We've had stage one of the digital TV switchover in our area today and when I put the telly on to watch the news this evening we had nothing but a 'no signal' message. Cue frantic shouts to P to come and re-tune the ultra cheap digibox we've got, which we bought for £13.00 when Woolworths were closing down. He fiddled and faffed around with it and eventually we had some of the channels up and running but none of the BBC ones. I was not happy, as this evening is one of the few programmes I actually watch on TV - The Apprentice. And we were both a little worried that our el-cheapo digibox was going to have to be consigned to the bin and we'd either have to make do with the five terrestrial channels again (Gawd, that would be a dire prospect,) or we'd have to go out and buy another box in order to get the other Freeview channels.
P took himself off to check out the digital switchover web page - which rather unhelpfully told us that our area is served by a transmitter in Kent which is not due to change to digital until June. Um, no, don't think that's correct as we've had a very irritating message appear every time we switched the TV on for the past few weeks saying that the switchover was starting today. I was exhorting P, in the strongest possible terms, to phone the helpline number and see what they had to say. Obviously they only work office hours as by the time he tried there were only recorded messages. Very bl**dy helpful to those of us desperate to get the BBC!!
Anyhoo, hats off to P, he's gone through the whole retuning process again and has got everything working A-OK. What a hero!! I'm off to watch The Apprentice in a mo with a nice cup of Rosie Lee and a couple of chocolate digestive biscuits. And long may our ultra-cheap digibox keep on working.
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