Some 400,000 households are thought to have lost access to ITV3 and ITV4 since the digital TV Freeview retune on 30 September. Others have reported losing other channels and worse reception.
The Freeview service was upgraded to give more homes channel Five, but many Digitalchoices.co.uk users have complained of losing channels, and reduced picture and sound quality.
Digitalchoices.co.uk user, Valerie Jones from Manchester said that since the retune she’s experienced “sound interruption, dancing pictures, blocking and freezing pictures,” when watching Freeview.
Jeremy from Buckinghamshire said “I am seriously looking at Freesat, Virgin Media or Sky, or just turning my antenna around and going back to analogue,” after losing channels ITV1 and ITV2.
And Helen McGowan, from Weymouth, lost several channels following the retune. She asked Digitalchoices.co.uk: “Is it possible to reinstate ITV3 and ITV4 as I’m one of the 460,000 viewers who have lost them? I would have preferred to retain them rather than have the channels that the Freeview retuning has imposed upon me.”
On September 30 all Freeview customers, including households with Tiscali TV and BT Vision, were told to retune their set-top boxes in order to receive new channels. However, the retuning process has left many households around the UK without certain channels.
A Freeview spokeswoman said: “The only channels that customers may have lost are ITV3, ITV4 and the community channel. Customers that have lost these channels need to speak to the broadcasters themselves to get the channels back.”
Freeview advises customers to use the postcode checker on its website to ascertain what channels they should be to receive, and then retuning again.
Jon Ingram, operations director at Digitalchoices.co.uk, said: “If you’re a Freeview customer and are having problems, read our simple guide to retuning your digibox for help.”
http://www.digitalchoices.co.uk/freeview-customers-vent-anger-over-retune-fiasco-15102009.html
