What is behind the 30 September Freeview retune?

Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV 31st July 2009 at 18:15

"All Freeview boxes, Freeview+ digital TV recorders and digital TVs will need to be retuned for viewers to carry on receiving all of the services available to them, including Five, ITV4 and BBC Radio stations. Without a retune on or after Wednesday 30 September, viewers will not be able to access these channels."

If you are wondering how to retune your Freeview box, please see how to do a Freeview retune.

There is a gap in this year's switchover scheudle. The Carmel group of transmitters finishes on 23 September 2009, with the next at Llanddona starting on 18 November 2009.

This leaves time to sort out the multiplex configurations before the introduction of the Freeview HD service on 2 November 2009.

Things are going to get a little bit complicated, as a game of musical chairs has to happen. Here's a diagram to help your understanding.



First, the BBC needs to move all of the services it operates from multiplex B, because after November 2009 the post-switchover version (PSB3 or BBCB) will be operating in DVB-T2 mode and will be invisible to standard Freeview boxes.

However, the BBC also needs to run non-switched regions for the next four years. For this reason, all but one of the BBC television and radio channels will move to a statisitical multiplex block of 16Mbps. In non-switched regions this will be multiplex 1, in switched-over regions this will be two-thirds of multiplex BBCA.

This will look to most people like BBC FOUR/CBeebies moving from Mux B to Mux 1.

The BBCi services will then form a block of 8Mb/s that will comprise the final third of multiplex PSB1/BBCA, or will be carried as multiplex B before switchover.

The public service channel FIVE will move to Multiplex 2 as part of the bandwidth swap that allowed BBCB to be used for Freeview HD. This deal also puts BBC Parliament on Multiplex 2. In Wales S4C and S4C2 will also need to be carried on D3+4 multiplex.

ITV will be moving ITV4 to Multiplex A (a swap with FIVE) that will restrict this channel to the full Freeview service transmitters.