We are most firmly in the interactive digital age now. How do I know? A couple of days ago my digital Freeview tv insisted on telling me via a black box on my screen that there were to be two steps to the digital changeover. To learn more select the blue button, to remove the message select the yellow button. I’m not sure whether this counts as pedantry, but I think it should have said to temporarily remove the message select yellow. As soon as I changed channels the message was back. So I selected blue in the hope that it would register that I was interested in what the tv was trying to tell me and would therefore stop trying to gain my attention.

One lives in hope. If my tv had its own voice it would probably have said ‘I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that’. Funny how one always expects electronic goods of any sort to start channeling HAL when things go wrong. Blue or Yellow made no odds. Change channel, turn off, turn back on, message in black box. So I thought maybe it’s imminent and therefore necessary that I do something right now. So I Googled when the digital switchover was due putting in my postcode and noticed that my house name or number was also requested. A little strange, so I made use of the ‘Why do you need this?’ link only to be told that the results would be a lot more accurate if I input this detail.

Now I’m no expert on public transmitters, digital or otherwise, but I have the sneaking suspicion that, unless you live on a road the length of the M3 the number of your house isn’t going to make that much difference to which transmitter you are getting your signal from. This suspicion was born out when the results came back saying ‘The Rowridge transmitter in the Meridian TV region is your most likely transmitter.’ So much for accuracy.

Expecting the changeover date to be that night because of the insistence of my tv, I was a little surprised to see that it was in March 2012. A horrible thought then dawned on me, what if this was going to happen every time I changed channel or switched on until Spring next year? Fortunately it seemed that there was to be no repeat the following day, or the day after. One cannot help but have the sneaking suspicion that the black box may be appearing again before we are launched into the digital wonderland next March. One last little point to give us all the feeling this will all go fine and dandy is a note on the Digital UK website which says “You won’t see these messages if you already watching digital TV (e.g Sky TV, Freview or another) or if your aerial is pointing at another transmitter that will switch at a different time.” That worked then and nice to know they can spell ‘Freeview’. Details such as they are below.

Well here’s a wonderful thing. We moved into the digital TV age several years back now and looked forward to brilliantly clear pictures and no more worries about tuning stations. Until last Wednesday. Now all our digital TV contrivances had been warning us we would need to rescan them on 25 March to be able to continue to watch anything other than four terrestrial analogue channels (We couldn’t get Five on analogue before anyway). I didn’t think it would be too tricky, after all I wrestle with networks of computers and t’Internet on a daily basis. All you have to do is find the right buttons on the remote and it’s pretty automatic.

And so it turned out, kinda. A subtle side effect was that all the favourites that I had laboriously set up on each digital TV thingy so they all matched had been wiped so they had to be recreated from scratch. Now in the scheme of things hardly a disaster I grant you. No-one was injured, no ambulances had to be called and no animals were hurt in the process. However just as every designer thinks they have the best design, demonstrably better than anyone else, so it is that every digital TV appliance designer thinks they have the best way to organise your channels. The idea being that you can shuffle the less than useful channels to the nether regions of your list, only to be seen when you are looking for an obscure radio channel. Well my experience tells me most of them are wrong. Of course I could have paused to read the manual, but that would have sat uncomfortably with my carefully nurtured techie persona, and therefore was effectively a non-option. Still the sense of empowerment after I had got the channels in the order I wanted almost made it worth it.  At least I know how much time to set aside the next time I have to rescan.

Now if that sounds a tad jaundiced, it’s probably because it is. See all the digital channels are transmitted on an analogue channel around 33-34 I think, so when you rescan, that particular channel becomes off-limits to any other gizmo generating a modulated signal. Like a video recorder. Yes I know, but a lot of people still have video recorders because they haven’t broke yet and getting a hard disk or DVD recorder means unplumbing an awful lot of wires in my case. And teaching all other members of household how to use something somewhat different to what they are used to. It will happen, but best left until disaster strikes. Not to say a certain amount of market research hasn’t been done of course, you have to be prepared. So anyway all it looked good on main telly, digital signal looks OK, no significant losses of channels, so I turn the video on to set up a recording and the picture on the TV breaks up.

Now you may recall that when Five was first launched, everyone had to have their videos retuned so they could get the signal. Ours was. Don’t know if it was on a different channel in London to down here ‘cos we were living in London at the time, but it turns out it was placed smack dab in the middle of what is now the new digital channel. Once I had realised that it was a simple case of retuning the output of the video so the picture no longer broke up. And yes I did have to read the manual to do that. Since in common with most we now use the Scart input exclusively, I can probably turn the modulator off completely. But that means I’ll have to read the manual again, so no rush.