The Licence Just Got Better Value (TV Licence)

Member Name: Nibelung

Product:	TV Licence
Date:	10/10/02 (310 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: DTT maximises the VFM of the licence fee, Improved interactivity

Disadvantages: Slow roll out will lose too many potential users to Sky in the meantime

In the best traditions of Frankie Howerd,

THE PROLOGUE

I just thought I'd set down a few facts about the forthcoming re-launch of Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting in defence of the licence fee. There seems to be a wealth of opinion along the lines of "for the rubbish the BBC produce, they've got a cheek charging for it!" These people usually go on to argue that Sky has hundreds of channels (yeah, costing anywhere up to £35/month), on which they can watch the "rubbish" all over again, or better still, watch it before it appears on mainstream TV! Big deal!

Out of the ashes of the collapsed ITVDigital, previously On Digital, rises "Freeview", an offering put forward by the BBC and some other associates to carry the torch of Digital Terrestrial TV for the foreseeable future.

As its name implies, Freeview carries no added rental fee, just the usual TV Licence, although at a later date, it may be possible to add on some subscription channels - at least the technology exists to do so.

WHY DIGITAL?

You may or may not know, but it is official government policy to wean us off what we know as the "telly wiv an aerial", a.k.a. analogue terrestrial television for several reasons, not least of which is a shortage of frequencies for ground-based TV channels. Panic not, the switch off date is yet to be set in stone, and there is much work to be done to make sure that those who could get analogue will be able to get digital instead.

A switchover to digital would allow several channels to be broadcast down one frequency, and if that sounds far-fetched, well, listen up, because it's how digital terrestrial TV is ALREADY working. The upshot being that several more frequencies would be freed up by the switchover. Other advantages include a greater degree of interactivity, with the ability to watch a picture-in-picture whilst using enhanced text services, and a vice-free pi

cture (that's if you can get one, and it's STILL a big if), with no ghosting or snow storming. What tends to happen with DTT is that either you get a good picture or nothing at all! The interim period, if bad weather makes your picture 'marginal' is very rapid. One second you have a perfect 625-line screen, then some pixellation, followed by nowt, nada, niente, nichts, rien.

One of the reasons for the demise of ITVDigital was the cost of providing subsidised aerial (antenna) upgrades to complaining customers, and the fact that many people simply could not get it at all.

Freeview hopes to overcome this in a couple of subtle ways. The freed-up bandwidth created by the cessation of much of ITVDigital's subscription 'dross' has created more air space in which to transmit a lesser number of channels. Using a more 'robust' digital transmission medium called 16QAM, and increasing transmitter power slightly in many places, Freeview hope to reach a further million customers from day one.

Further signal strength improvements are planned, but many can't be carried out until the analogue switch off for fear of interfering with existing channels, so you see can a Catch-22 situation developing here. On the one hand, you've got official encouragement to throw your lot in with DTT, and on the other hand, there's no promise that it?ll work properly until after analogue is switched off! 'It'll be alright on the night', yeah right, where have I heard that before?

SO WHAT'S ON OFFER?

As far as I can tell, and I've been keeping one ear to the ground on a site called www.digitalspy.co.uk, the following channels should be available at the end of October 2002. Many of them are of course already available to those who can receive DTT, and have continued to watch it since the pay channels went phutt.

Channel 01 BBC1
Channel 02 BBC2
Channel 03 ITV1
Chan
nel 04 Channel 4
Channel 05 five - renamed from CH5
Channel 06 ITV2
Channel 07 BBC 3
Channel 09 ITV Teletext
Channel 10 BBC 4
Channel 11 Sky Travel
Channel 12 UK History*
Channel 16 QVC
Channel 17 TV Travel Shop
Channel 18 The Hits*
Channel 19 UK HomeStyle*
Channel 20 Ftn - Flextech*
Channel 21 TMF - MTV Europe
Channel 22 Ch 22 ?*
Channel 30 CBBC
Channel 31 Cbeebies
Channel 32 ?*
Channel 40 BBC News 24
Channel 41 ITV News, was ITN News
Channel 42 Sky News
Channel 43 Sky Sports News
Channel 44 ?*
Channel 45 BBC Parliament - Still sound only, unlike Sky
Channel 46 Community*
Channel 50 FourText
Channel 51 BBCi
Channel 52 NTL
Channel 71 BBC Radio1 Xtra
Channel 75 BBC R5 Live
Channel 76 BBC R5L Sports Extra
Channel 77 BBC R6 Music
Channel 78 BBC 7
Channel 79 BBC Asian Radio
Channel 80 BBC World Service
Channel 81 Smash Hits
Channel 82 Kiss
Channel 83 Kerrang!
Channel 84 Jazz FM
Channel 85 oneword

Please note, that channels 71-85 are radio channels, and that those others marked with asterisks, had not, at the time of writing committed to tell us what their programming was likely to be.

However, as you can see, it's a fair boost to the 5 analogue channels available, and all for the same licence fee.

SO HOW DO I GET IT?

There are several ways in which these signals can be received, but always through an aerial. Firstly check the BBCs web site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/digital/) to see if your postcode can receive signals at all - after all you wouldn't want to pay out £100 just to find that it doesn't work well. One would also hope that the likes of Dixons etc would let you know before they sold you anything, but I'm not going to recommend holding your breath on that one! As a rule of thumb, if there are any local attributes t
hat lead to your reception of a weak analogue picture, say a nearby high-rise, then DTT probably won't work either. It's just that it won't work in a different way!

Those who rented the ITVDigital set-top box (STB) can just re-tune it to lock onto the new channels and hope that the official receivers have lost their appetite for reclaiming the box! Mine's hiding round my mum's house giving her a bit of extra viewing choice. I retuned it yesterday, and all of the above channels are identified, although not all are broadcasting yet. Hopefully, any ideas they had for charging us £80 for a second-hand bit of kit have receded, with tales of new £20 STB's in the pipeline.

You can now buy a series of free-to-air STB's for less than £100, rumoured to be dropping drastically soon, as I said above. These link to your TV via a SCART lead, or in some cases, by looping the aerial cable in and out of the box to the TV, like you would with a VCR. Many of these have timers for VCR use, and seem to be more likely to receive software upgrades over the air than the old ITVD ones do. This could prove significant as improvements to the 'Now & Next' electronic programme guide come on stream to include a meaningful list of programmes stretching off days into the future.

The 'Rolls-Royce' option is to buy an Integrated Digital TV (IDTV) - look for the DVB symbol on the front. This is only advisable if you've got money to burn or are about to buy a new widescreen TV. Yes, much of DTT's current programming is genuinely widescreen - it's only re-runs that aren't. I've got a 32" Sony IDTV, and the picture from Crystal Palace is superb. One case where size really does matter.

One of the STB manufacturers, Pace, is bringing out a new STB in time for Christmas, which includes two tuners and one hard-disk drive recorder to get round the usual complaint levelled at STB's, i.e. that you can o
nly record the programme that is on at that time. It also serves to render the VCR redundant by making superior digital recordings to a 20 gbyte drive (user upgradeable). Of course, once it's full you have some decisions to make as to what you want to dump, and what you want to archive to VCR. Good job you didn't throw it away on my say-so! Price thought to be in the region of £340, which is just a little dearer than the Sky+ box for satellite with very similar features. The Sky box costs you £10 more per month though - this costs nothing extra.

CONCLUSION

If you're sure you can receive it, either because you already can, or there seems to be a wealth of opinion in your neck of the woods that it works OK, then this new offering is quite attractive to those that only wanted a bit more variety without subscribing to anything. Also, with Murdoch hoovering up contracts like no-one's business, it pays not to like sport though, since the above list is hardly likely to satisfy!

If you're not sure, seek technical advice from anyone you can, ranging from the BBC web site to aerial installers with a tale to tell.

I know that many people begrudge the licence fee, and argue that they shouldn't have to pay it "because they only watch Sky", but at little more than £0.30p per day to get seven or so stations with no commercials and access to another load that do, compared to ( for example the £16/month Family Pack ) Sky's commercial-infested offering, give me the licence any day.

Personally, if it weren't for the lack of Sky One and E4 on Freeview, I'd jack my subscription to Sky in as soon as I'm able. £16/month just to get these two seems a trifle over the top really.

Summary: