BBC 4 HD, & Cbeebies HD to move to PSB3

[Aplus1]

You can trace the origins of MPEG 2 back to 1988.

Virtually no one's TV had to be scrapped at DSO, if any were then more fool them!

All that was rendered useless at DSO were the On Digital boxes because of the switch from 2k to 8k modulation.

You can trace the origins of anything back to any arbitrary date, but MPEG-2 was not generally available in silicon until at least 1996/1997 kind of time. Even MPEG-1 was only starting to become available in the early 90s, with consumer disc formats like Video CD still very much 'to be finalised' at launch. I seem to remember that one of the US digital satellite platforms of the mid-90s launched with MPEG-1 because MPEG-2 was not ready, also.

There were plenty of IDTVs which could only handle 2K - Ofcom numbered it as at least 75,000, from major makers like Panasonic, Hitachi, Sony, Toshiba, etc. - and it wasn't just ONdigital boxes as other early set top boxes like the Pace DTVA were also affected. Several million boxes all becoming ewaste overnight. Not good.

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Would be very difficult to explain to the public which boxes and TV would stop working and what ones won’t.

Not really, in my opinion. Simply "Do you have Freeview and are you able to watch BBC One HD on channel 101?". If yes to the first part and no to the second, then you'll be affected.

Most ordinary people won't understand that - they'll hear "can you watch BBC One" and say "Oh yes, I get BBC1, it's fine."

Also they could do it one multiplex at a time, and leave PSB1 and PSB2 unconverted using DVB-T to allow those with older devices some channels.

I don't think the commercial channels on the other multiplexes have any desire to have their already very expensive Freeview carriage reduced in reach any further, unless there is a significant discount offered in recognition of that. If the PSB channels wish to push forward DVB-T2 adoption then let them put their money where their mouth is - convert PSB1 and PSB2 to T2, and flip PSB3 into an unregionalised national DVB-T SD mux with some kind of 'red screen of death' during the local news.

Run that for a limited period until enough people give up on it, and the job is done. At that point, the commercial operators will be far more content with a switchover of their own muxes.