The digital switchover explained

The digital switchover's fast approaching, and you'll no doubt have questions. Fear not. All of them and more are answered here.

It's a time of uncertainty. The five channels of TV we grew up with will have their analogue signal switched off between the 4th and 18th of April. In London, anyway. I don't know about the rest of the country. Frankly, I don't want to know.

There must be questions raging in your mind. Will everything change? Will everything, in actual fact, be essentially the same? I mean, most of the questions are largely encompassed by those two, but that doesn't mean we can't elaborate a bit. Here's your easy Q&A guide to the digital switchover.
How do I retune my digital box?

This can be achieved through a relatively simple two-step process.

1. Stare very hard at your digital box.
2. Hope that, somehow, everything will turn out for the best.

If you are over 50, call your adult son or daughter and waste their evening fretting about it. Ask questions like: "So if I don't have a scart, will the cord from my electric blanket do?"
George Alagiah's head looks a bit wider than usual, doesn't it?


You are watching in the wrong aspect ratio. If you were at my house, I would honestly do you bodily harm if you sat and watched a 4:3 image stretched out to 16:9 and thought that was somehow OK. Get it changed.
Now I can get BBC4, why is it all in fucking Norwegian?

It's Danish, you idiot. Now concentrate: if you don't take it all in, no one at the tennis club will speak to you any more.

Why can't everything just stay the same? We never had to change the telly before all those bloody Poles started coming in, taking all our jobs and analogue signals. D'you know, I had to wait for ten minutes in the post office yesterday because one of them was in front of me and couldn't speak the language. And another thing ...

(*waits patiently*)
Will Andy Parsons still be a cunt?



Are the CIA controlling my thoughts through the digital signal?


It's an entirely fair question. I mean, how much do we really know about all this? Sure, The Man tells us it's for our own good, but how can we be sure it's not just mind control? When the state pushes something on you without trusting you enough to give you the facts, that's fascism, my friends: plain and simple. They won't get away with th- ... hey look, you can get old episodes of Jeeves and Wooster on ITV3!
That's made you remember the Jeeves and Wooster theme tune, hasn't it?

Sorry. Give us a minute, would you?


Thanks.
Where can I find the ... um ... you know. That is to say, the ... uh ...?

Babestation's on channel 94.

I would like it known that I had to look that up.

I hope that allays some of your fears. Sure, 2012 is the year the world's going to end, but as long as you can still get repeats of Grand Designs after April, everything will be just fine.