Freeview viewers reminded to retune

chris

More than 18 million homes with Freeview will need to retune their equipment this week or face losing certain TV and radio stations.

The exercise is designed to give more viewers access to Channel Five but those who already have the channel stand to lose it if they fail to retune.

Viewers who do not adapt their equipment as of next Wednesday will also lose ITV3 and ITV4.

Some BBC Radio stations will also be affected in homes which have already gone through the digital switchover, a Freeview spokesman said.

Messages have been already been shown on-screen alerting people to the changes. But some viewers have expressed frustration, saying the process has caused confusion.

"The messages keep flashing up while I am watching programmes and I'm finding it quite annoying," said one 32-year-old, from south London.

"They tell us we need to retune our channels but we can't do anything about it until September 30. Sometimes it is good to have information in advance but in this case I think it is probably causing people a lot of unnecessary worry."

The retuning exercise will mean more than 500,000 Freeview homes will be able to receive Channel Five for the first time. A new channel called Quest will also be available to the majority of Freeview homes, on channel 38.

Ilse Howling, managing director of Freeview, said: "These are significant and necessary changes which will immediately bring Freeview viewers new channels, introduce new homes to existing channels and prepare the platform for the future availability of Freeview HD."

Technical changes, including preparations for the future availability of high definition channels on Freeview, will take place during the morning of September 30 and are expected to be complete by lunchtime. To avoid losing services, viewers are advised to retune their equipment as soon as possible after this. Those who are unable to retune on September 30 can do so at a later stage.



Source:The Press Association