Switchover sees shops switch off 5-Channel TVs
Monday, September 17th, 2007Analogue sets will not be stocked in 2008
With the first stages of the digital switchover due to begin next month in Whitehaven, the TV industry has taken a large step to encourage the switchover by halting the production of old analogue sets that are only capable of receiving 5 channels.
High street black goods merchants Currys and Comet and telly manufacturers Sony and Panasonic have all said last night that they would stop selling and making outdated analogue TVs. From next year, only TVs with Scart connections and IDTV sets will be manufactured.
This represents the biggest leap forward yet in the digital revolution, effectively marking the end of TV as we have come to know it.
Residents in Whitehaven need to get their skates on – with analogue shutdown due to happen in less than month, recent surveys estimate that only 8 out of 10 homes in the Whitehaven area have are digital-ready – with retail outlets such as Tesco providing cheap as chips set-top boxes, and Virgin offering their ADSL subscribers free Freeview boxes, and the Digital Switchover Help Scheme being set up to help Cumbria residents, there are few excuses not to get connected.
