Treading carefully through the Digital TV minefield
22 December 2008

"...the best we could hope for was Carol Voderman through a lot of white noise. Some would say that's the best way to watch Countdown"

You'd have to have been locked in a room with no TV or radio for the last 3 years not to have realised that television is going digital. What this means is that we all have to make choices about our viewing habits. Who will supply our service, what kind of programming we want and in what format and crucially how much (if anything) we're prepared to pay for it. With switch over to digital ramping up it's time to spin the wheel and make your choice.

When I was little (a depressingly long time ago now) TV was pretty simple. You bought a set, plugged in the aerial and turned it on. You got two channels from the BBC and one independent service. The only choice you had to make was whether you wanted a colour or black and white set. By the early 80's you had to also choose whether you wanted one with a new fangled remote control unit (a very flash purchase at the time). Then along came Channel 4. We couldn't get it where we were so the best we could hope for was Carol Voderman through a lot of white noise. Some would say that's the best way to watch Countdown.

This isn't meant to be a TV history lesson, so let's skip on to today. Television (as we've already established) is going digital. What this means is that everyone who watches TV in the UK must change to a digital service by the time their region switches off the terrestrial analogue signal that has been in use for decades. When this will happen for you is most easily determined by your local ITV region and has already occurred in the Scottish Borders with West Country, HTV Wales and Granada to follow next year. In my local region (Meridian) switch over doesn't happen until 2012.

Although, theoretically, you can wait until the last minute to switch, you can "go digital" right now if you want to. Upwards of 85% of the UK population has done just that so the switch over is going to be pretty painless. However, what many people don't realise is the choices that are available in this market. When going digital (or deciding to change digital provider) you need to ask yourself two important questions. Firstly, what do you want to watch and, secondly, how much are you prepared to pay for it.

What do you want to watch
All digital providers carry services from the main "terrestrial" broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five). If you're happy with these channels then you could go down the free route buying either a Freeview decoder box to receive digital TV through an aerial mounted on your roof or Freesat to receive digital services with no subscription through a satellite dish.

On the other hand, if you want certain sports, movies or lots of High Definition content (more on HD in a moment) then you may be willing for fork out for a subscription service from Sky, Virgin Media (cable television) or BT Vision.

How much are you willing to pay
Freeview is free (there's a clue in the name) but you can pay a small monthly charge to have Top Up TV adding channels like G.O.L.D. to your lineup (if your set top box has a slot to take a viewing card). Freesat is totally free and even has set top boxes available with Sky+ like functionality (ie. pause and rewind live TV, record programmes onto an internal hard disk). Rumour has it that iPlayer will be integrated into Freesat next year.

Sky, Virgin Media and BT Vision have lots of packages available that bundle in things like home phone calls and/or broadband so it's ridiculously complicated to compare them as everyone's needs will be different. See their respective web sites for info, and make sure you only factor in the services you really need to work out which is best for you. (By the way, iPlayer is available on Virgin's service, but is unlikely to find it's way onto Sky.)

The HD confusion
If all that wasn't confusing enough, there is the additional factor of High Definition (HD) to throw in to the melting pot. People appear to be even more mislead by HD than they are about digital generally. However, it's really not that complicated.

A old "big box" cathode-ray-tube (CRT) telly shows broadcasts in stereo (normally) with 576 lines of horizontal resolution with half of these updated approximately every 1/12 of a second (that's simplifying things somewhat, but you get the idea). This is called 576i. High Definition broadcasts currently come in two flavours: 720p and 1080i (720 lines of horizontal resolution all updated at the same time, or 1080 lines 540 of which are updated in alternate scans. 1080p is only possible via Blue Ray, at the moment). It's often overlooked, but it's important to point out that HD includes 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.

So, what does all this mean and what do you need to get all this HD loveliness? First of all, you need an HD decoder box such as SkyHD, FreesatHD or Virgin Media's V+ HD decoder. If you have anything else you won't be watching HD broadcasts and you won't be getting them in surround sound. Freeview will be launching a limited number of HD channels in the bandwidth freed up by the switch over to digital. If you're a Freeview customer then you'll need to buy a new FreeviewHD decoder box to receive these channels but don't hold your breath as there's currently no way of getting HD through a normal TV aerial.

The really important thing here is that not only do you need an HD decoder box, but you need an HD Ready (or Full HD) telly (plus an optional surround sound system). If you don't have BOTH of these items then you won't be viewing HD however good you think the picture looks to you. The number of people who buy an HD Ready TV who think that they're watching HD with a standard definition decoder box is embarrassing.

This means that if you want to watch HD, you have to decide if you want to pay a subscription or not. If money is no object then there are over 30 HD channels on SkyHD at the moment and Virgin are catching up fast. However, you'll pay quite a bit to get these channels as many of them are considered Premium (e.g. sports and movies) and there's an additional HD subscription over and above whatever sub you'd be paying for the same standard definition service. It all adds up.

Freesat offers an HD service for a one-off payment, but at the moment only BBC HD is worth watching. ITV has some HD content (available exclusively to Freesat viewers via the red button) but this is very few and far between at the time of writing. Nice to see that they're showing their football coverage in HD, though.

To summarise
In summary, you may be seriously confused now - maybe even more than when you started reading this post. What you need to do in this digital age is consider what you want to watch rather than who your provider will be and then see who best fits the bill. Be aware that if you've got an HD telly then you need an HD decoder box and service to actually get a high definition picture and surround sound.

Personally, after trying cable (many years ago before it became Virgin) and then Sky, I've realised that I watch the mainstream channels a good deal more than I've ever viewed those on subscription so as of this month I've cancelled Sky+ and bought a nice shiney new Freesat+ box from Humax. This has the same functionality as Sky+ but also includes HD with no subscription. I don't actually have an HD Ready TV, though, but that's another story...

Next time I'll review the Humax Foxsat HDR Freesat+ HD digital satellite receiver and compare it with Sky+.