Sep 30 2009
Freeview updates rolled out today: thousands to lose channels
Around half a million households are set to lose Freeview channels permanently today as the latest in a series of pointless updates is to be rolled out at lunchtime.
The update is ‘necessary’ to upgrade Freeview to a format that can broadcast High Definition television some time in the future. We’re not being told quite when yet, but best estimates show it’ll be long after HD television is obsolete and consigned to the rubbish bin along with analogue, the cathode ray tube and VHS cassettes.
The upgrade will allow greater access to Five, bringing it to homes that previously could not receive the channel. However, it is also set to leave around 460,000 households without ITV3 and ITV4 permanently, and an awful lot of technophobes with a massive headache.
Thankfully for the less technology literate, the BBC have provided a step-by-step guide on how to retune one’s Freeview box. Unfortunately for them, however, it is only accessible via the red button, meaning you will have to wade through endless screens of junk and execute a whole load of button combinations before you actually get to the guide proper. And that’s before you even get to the retune itself.
Retuning, however, is relatively simple, at least compared to navigating the BBCi service. Unless you are a complete idiot, you will be able to put two and two together and figure out where the retune button is on your remote. Failing that, there’s always the twenty page instruction booklet recently distributed by the powers that be to let us all know, in no uncertain terms, that the digital switchover is coming.
It is, of course, all propaganda to convince us that digital really is the way forward. Oh well, at least we’re not having 3D television shoved down our throats, at least not yet anyway.
Future updates will ensure all Freeview viewers lose all channels at all times as part of the country’s revamping of its television broadcasting structure. In the coming weeks, all TV masts and aerials will be deconstructed and melted down to make Nissan Micras and cutlery for posh people.
