Freeview changes: 29th/30th June as COM7 closes

[Brekkie]

Well it wouldn't be no TV, it would just be one mux down at a time - though in theory once you've done the first you can temporarily stock that full with SD channels on DVB-T2 whilst others are being done.



The simplest way probably is for the BBC to go first as their core four channels are in HD already, but they'd need to house BBC News and BBC Parliament temporarily, but they could probably be squeezed in on PSB3 in SD.  Obviously BBC Scotland/Alba to factor in too. 




However in reality I suspect any plan would keep the main BBC channels at least and ITV/C4/C5 in SD on DVB-T until the end of the switch over.

I don't quite follow your logic, you can easily upgrade a mux and all of its transmitters from T1 to T2 virtually instantaneously . Hardware upgrades and replacements at the broadcaster end can be done over a period of time, you do the standby kit first, then the main, run it all at T1 then when you're ready flip the whole lot over at once, overnight.



In fact exactly that was done with the 1000 or so small relays at DSO. The transposers were exchanged months and years in advance for dual standard analogue/DVB kit, and run in analogue mode until the relevant DSO in each region, then switched on DSO day. It was the only way to do it in fact !



What is the challenge is all the millions of bits of receiving equipment.

If that's the case then there is no excuse not to do it (My theory was only based on how long PSB3 was out of action in 2010 between the 2nd BBC SD mux closing and the HD mux launching as it was withdrawn before the Winter Olympics but didn't launch in HD till closer to the World Cup).  

Would be interesting to see the most recent stats on that receiving equipment as I suspect it's far higher than this discussion might pressume - I know when we were talking about it a few years back something like 50% of viewers were thought to have Freeview HD equipment so a few years on I'd expect that to be significantly higher - although of course every 1% without is still hundreds of thousands of people.