Black Hill, Scotland switchover process starts
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV This week sees the first stage of the digital television switchover for the 1,014,000 homes in Glasgow and much of the central belt of Scotland.
From 6am Wednesday 8th June 2011, you will need to a "first time installation" retune on your Freeview box or television set if you use the Black Hill full service Freeview transmitter.
If you use the Abington, Biggar, Bridge of Allan, Broughton, Callander, Cathcart, Clachan, Cumbernauld Village, Deanston, Dollar, Dunoon Forest Row, Easdale, Fintry, Gigha Island, Glasgow West Central, Glespin, Haddington, Kelvindale, Killearn, Kilmacolm, Kirkconnel, Kirkfieldbank, Largs, Leadhills, Millport, Netherton Braes, New Cumnock, Ravenscraig VP, Rothesay, Rothesay Town, South Knapdale, Strachur, Strathblane, Strathyre, Strathyre Link, Tarbert, Tighnabruaich, Tillicoultry, Twechar, Uplawmoor, or West Kilbride relay transmitter, from this date you will be able to receive the BBC Freeview services (with the exception of HD), and you will no longer be able to view BBC TWO on analogue.
You MAY find that old equipment will no longer work - see TVs and boxes that do not support the 8k-mode
On Wednesday 22nd June 2011 will see the second stage of switchover, which provides the final Freeview configuration, including Freeview HD for all transmitters in this region.
Maggie: all muxes from Black Hill were off the air at the time you wrote, with Stage 2 of DSO. By this morning you should do a retune and all will be well.
Stuart O: Reporting Scotland has given extensive coverage of the DSO (which of course has happened in different parts of Scotland on different dates) and presentation has provided announcements about switchover for each transmitter group prior to switch off.
| link to this comment |
I understand transmission power will increase, has this happened yet or will it increase in stages?
| link to this comment |
1:42 PM
Glasgow
I've been retuning all day and I still have no channels, so now what?
| link to this comment |
Maggie's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
2:24 PM
Bryan McAlister: All power increases have already happened this morning, if your transmitter is back on-air. Some are still off-air as work is being completed. The status for each relay can be found at http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/when_do_i_switch/stv_central/black_hill/blackhillrelaytimes .
| link to this comment |
2:32 PM
Maggie Nicholson: Looking at the prediction for your postcode, chances are that you now have too much signal. If you have an amplifier or booster, remove it. Then you might need to add attenuation to bring the signals down to an acceptable level.
Based on the postcode, it looks like you're in a tower block, and using a communal aerial. If so, the system may need recalibrating and/or retuning. This may already be happening - check with your landlord or residents' association. See PARAS - Professional Aerial Riggers Against The Sharks for some thoughts.
Other possible problems would be 2K-only equipment, limits on internal memory in the box, failure to understand a large Network Information Table, failure to handle negative offsets on some equipment, or other equipment adding modulated output on a required channel. I don't expect any of these to apply to you. The first three would have shown up two weeks ago, Black Hill doesn't use any negative offsets, and modulators would normally only knock out one or two channels.
| link to this comment |
5:46 PM
WE got all freeview channels and had a very good signal, now getting nothing either after having retuned this afternoon.
| link to this comment |
6:31 PM
I have retuned my two digital hard drives which were working fine, but now when I try to record I get a message "to weak a signal to record".
| link to this comment |
8:51 PM
Wrexham
Tony Currie: The other news programmes I have watched, they had a full report lasting a few minutes about switchover and then the news presenters would talk to an expert from Digital UK about it both the night before and the night after switchover.
Reporting Scotland said nothing about it tonight.
STV News had all of 45 seconds about it.
Very poor really. I expected a lot more about it to be honest as it's a big day for Scotland. I remember Wales said a lot more about it than Scotland seems to have done.
Maybe I just wasn't watching on the correct nights, but just thought because the switchovers generally have happened Tuesday night-Wednesday morning, then that's when the regional news programmes is more likely to mention about DSO.
| link to this comment |
Stuart's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
10:12 PM
Stuart O.:I have just done a search on YouTube and I noticed that "bratwursthaggisgeek" has posted "The end of analogue tv in Scotland", showing the last 45 minutes of STV and BBC1 Scotland. At about 25 past midnight BBC1 made an announcement about the Black Hill switchover.
| link to this comment |
8:27 AM
Yes, we were using blackhill. Now sky news is unwatchable, and channel 11 (think it was one of the channel 4 channels) is too bad.
Had NO PROBLEMS before switchover. What have they done. This clearly wasnt tested or they knew the signal strength was reduced or compacted.
Disgrace.
| link to this comment |