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Regional Victoria to switch by May

All of regional Victoria will have to switch to digital television by 5 May 2011.

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All of regional Victoria will have to switch to digital television by 5 May 2011, after the government announced the end of analogue signals.

Around 455,000 households outside the Melbourne metropolitan area, and excluding Mildura/Sunraysia which has already switched, will be affected.

“Regional Victoria is already well down the track to conversion to digital-only TV, with 76 per cent of households already converted, and 95 per cent of households aware of the digital switchover date,” Senator Stephen Conroy said.

“Many Victorians have been enjoying the benefits of digital TV for some time now, and those yet to make switch now have a deadline to get ready for digital TV.”

The Satellite Subsidy Scheme is available to some housholds to assist with the cost of converting to the satellite service.

Next to switch are Broken Hill, Riverland, Spencer Gulf, Mt Gambier/South East South Australia on 15 December 2010.

New channels 7mate and GEM recently arrived, but replaced HD broadcasts available on 7HD and 9HD.

For more info visit www.digitalready.gov.au

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  3. If you’re in any complex or building with a shared antennae system, you may have problems getting this fixed. It’s up to the building owner to upgrade the system and they may not wish to.

    If you’re in a regular house or you know you have your own antennae system, you can get it upgraded if the signal is iffy and it’s usually not all that expensive. Check out the DTV forums…..dtvforum.info

    If you end up in a hopeless situation, contact the ACMA, they are ultimately responsible for sorting this mess out. The digital rollout in Australia has been very poorly handled. It amuses me that a country as rigidly right-wing as the USA at least gave every household one set top box, yet we couldn’t manage that.

  5. @Carta. I have the same problem but all that was needed was a small booster thing that goes between the wall and the cable for TV reception. You’re probably best to get it checked out because you may be able to save heaps of money and get a good signal with just a small device that literally plugs into the wall!

  6. @Carta and Rachael we had problems with digital tv and had to get a new digital arial and since then all channels are 10 in quality so you may need to buy new arials it might also be the arial cables when we got the new arial all the tvs were fine except one and the tech guy put a new cable on and it worked as good as the others

  7. @Carta
    I have the same problem with ABC, it is pretty much unwatchable, it rarely picks up a signal and if I want to watch it, I have to switch back to analogue where the signal is near perfect.
    Such a shame because every other digital channel works perfectly.

  8. @ Reg. True, but the govt is afraid of backlash in most areas of policy. In the USA they switched to digital in a single year. Coupons on the like helped for some people to get set top boxes.

    You’re correct though. Whatever the date is, some people will just wait until that date to upgrade their equipment.

  9. @newtaste – sounds like some ex-Harvey Norman salesmen have changed jobs. Meanwhile, a major Canberra retailer is selling 3D TVs “so you can see the AFL Grand Final in 3D”. Hmmm. No 3D in Canberra. Phones were in meltdown last weekend. SD set top boxes still being sold because “this is what you need to see all of the new channels”.

  10. I don’t know why they don’t move the final changeover date forward – it’s ridiculous that most of Victoria will have changed by early next year, but Melbourne won’t do so until the end of 2013. Digital take-up is high and rapidly growing so moving final changeover to the end of next year, for example, would make sense. Experience shows that whenever you set the date and however much information you give some people will not change. The sooner it’s done the better – then the government can either give more of the spectrum to digital TV, allowing new channels, or sell it off for other purposes.

  11. Does anyone else have major problems with the ABC’s digital signals? I’m on the Gold Coast and all three ABC channels are unwatchable due to blocking and freezing (not to mention the sound, which is atrocious), with the signal ranging from 0% strength to a maximum of 55% and changing constantly (going from 55 to 40 to 50 to 52 to 35 to 0 etc. within the space of 25 seconds). 10 Gold Coast is also unwatchable, but every single other digital channel is completely fine (80% signal strength as a bare minimum). It wasn’t always this bad, but I’m finding that with each additional station added, the ABC just gets worse.

  12. The digitalready website is stupidly advising that “Whether you choose to have an SD or HD set top box depends on your television.” Which is rubbish. They should be advising people to only buy a HD set top box.

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