Melbourne’s turn to Retune, Sydney up next.
Melburnians will have to Retune their television sets on Friday, and Sydney's turn falls in March.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Tomorrow Melburnians will have to Retune their television sets as the final part of the switch to Digital television.
The government is re-allocating spectrum to be used for other services such as mobile broadband, which means channels will be moving.
Viewers need to retune their digital TV, set-top box or digital TV recorder on or after the Retune date in their area.
The Retune has been rolling around the country for some time as work is carried out on transmission towers. On Friday February 7th it’s Melbourne’s turn, with Sydney the last major centre to be affected on March 18.
There are also likely to be some service disruptions around the time of the Retune date, due to work being conducted at the transmission site, expected to last a few hours.
The government recommends an auto-retune. On your channel Menu you should look for “set-up” options and words like: “channels” or “auto-tuning”.
If you watch via Pay TV or Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) service you won’t need to do anything.
There’s plenty of info available at http://retune.digitalready.gov.au/ and hotline numbers operate on 1800 20 10 13, 8am to 10pm (AEST), 7 days.
16 Responses
All my channels were working fine until I re tuned .
Now I cannot get all the ABC channels as they are all breaking up .
I tried to retune the ABC but it’s still playing up .
I also installed a digital antenna a few weeks before and all was ok .
Melb area very close to all transmission towers.
All antennas are pointing the same way .
Try calling the number?
The retune was was all good for tv, but for PVR not as simple as pressing a few buttons. For my aunts PVR, after several attempts to retune we discovered that we had to delete all SBS channels and then retune. For my PVR, I ended up with two sets of SBS channels and I any scheduled recordings resulted in only the old (now dead) channel being recorded. Couldn’t find a function on my PVR to delete old channels. Secret was to delete all scheduled recordings, retune and it worked! Now I’m stuck with all the crap telesales channels. Can’t find a delete channels option on my PVR, but I have SBS!!
@bill: Only SBS is affected in Melbourne’s case, so that’s a pretty good reason to re-tune.
I wouldn’t want to be on the switchboard at SBS tonight though when people are trying to tune into the big A League match and find SBS missing 🙂
Just think of all the quality FTA programming and infomercials you’ll miss if you don’t re-tune
I’m glad you’re telling people this David. I’ll admit I knew of it because it is the anniversary of Black Saturday.
@ Andrew
Thank you for the information about the timing. I was wondering if it would be about 9am.
@ ahs
Some of the transmission frequencies of the channels will change. So all that needs to be done is to make sure the television or equipment is picking all the channels up. If not it will need to be rescanned. Hopefully that will mean it’s the end of it. But it is assuming the new frequencies can be picked up by the antenna.
It’s a long winded way of saying the channel identification numbers won’t change. So Seven will still be Ch 7 if you get it. Same with Nine, Ten, SBS and the ABC.
Speaking for myself I just hope I can watch SBS again and it isn’t permanently unwatchable.
@Bazza: The Gold Coast is the most complicated retune outside the capitals, I believe: involving all broadcasters, and two transmitters with separate retune dates:
Gold Coast (Mt Tamborine, servicing northern end of the city) 18/11/14.
Gold Coast Hinterland (gapfiller) and Currumbin Hill transmitters (servicing southern Gold Coast suburbs) 19/11/14.
Any word on the retune in rural WA?
What will actually happen, will some channels numbers change??
The Gold Coast should have that as a slogan. “Australia’s 6th largest city”. Maybe more people would take notice.
I think my TV has already accounted for the changeover. It prompted me a while ago to scan for ‘new channels’ which was just the SBS channels but on the new frequency (Ch 7) so with any luck when the ‘old’ SBS UHF signal drops out I won’t need to retune again. The old PVR isn’t so clever, though, I suspect that will need a retune to get SBS back.
The retune should happen for Melbourne around 9.00am tomorrow.
can we do it at anytime tomorrow?
Not sure of times. I would watch SBS. If it’s gone, time to retune.
My equipment will probably do it automatically.
The trick is just to remember to turn it on before I want to watch something. It is rather annoying to have to wait 5 minutes for the return while something you want to watch is running.
Gold Coast is November 18… Or isn’t the 6th largest city a major enough centre?
Bazza I asked the hotline only yesterday who told me Sydney was the last major centre. Unfortunately I can only work with the info authorities supply.