FAQ - 2

Q.  I live where I cannot receive Rowridge so have one aerial receiving analogue tv from Winterborne Stickland (which gives me South news) and another aerial receiving digital tv from Mendip (giving West news). What will I receive after the Switchover?

A.  I'll answer this for each stage of the Switchover and the Retuning Event on 18 April.
7 March - DSO - 1
Winterborne Stickland will start transmitting all BBC stations digitally on channel 46. The same stations are transmitted from Mendip on channel 61 (at present - due to change in 2013). When you retune, your Freeview tuner(s) will start their scanning process from Channel 21 and work upwards. They will get to the Winterborne Stickland channel 46 first and so will slot all the BBC stations into their correct numbers. Therefore, whenever you then press "1" on your remote you will view BBC-1 South, for example. When the scanning gets to the Mendip channel 61 the same BBC channels will be slotted into numbers 800 and above. All other stations will be received as now.
21 March - DSO - 2
A similar situation will apply to the other two PSB Muxes which start digital transmission from Winterborne Stickland on this date. If you have a Freeview HD tuner it will put the HD stations from Winterborne Stickland (channel 40) into the correct numbers while the same stations from Mendip (channel 58) will be put into numbers greater than 800. Likewise, the D3&4 Mux (ITV-1, C4, C5 etc) from Winterborne Stickland (channel 43) will be stored in the correct numbers while those from Mendip (channel 54) will go into the 800s. All other stations will be received as now, but don't forget to retune on 28 March to continue to receive ArqA from Mendip.
18 April - Retune event
This event applies only to the Rowridge transmitter. The three COM Muxes (SDN, ArqA, ArqB) you will continue to receive from Mendip and their power will have increased on 27 and 28 March. Winterborne Stickland will not be transmitting those three Muxes.

All the above assumes you can receive the new digital transmissions from Winterborne Stickland. The digital transmission power will be 20% of the previous analogue power (200 W instead of 1000W) and Wimborne/Corfe Mullen are not in the service area of the transmitter. It is mere luck of geography which allows such reception now in out of service area locations. Having said that, digital transmissions do not need as much power as analogue transmissions.

There is another possible scenario, depending upon how difficult it is where your house is situated to receive the new Rowridge higher power transmissions. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that your Winterborne Stickland aerial may receive the Rowridge transmissions at sufficient strength. In which case, because Rowridge will be transmitting the BBC A Mux on channel 24, on 7 March your tuner(s) will lock onto that first while scanning. You can spot this usually by watching your on-screen display while the scanning is happening. Some equipment displays the channel numbers it's locking on to - other equipment doesn't but just provides a progress bar. If that progress bar slows down and holds very early in the scanning it suggests channel 24 is being stored. If you monitor the stability of those stations and all remains well, a change of aerial to receive just from Rowridge becomes a possibility once the DSO and Retune Event are over. A vertically polarised Group A aerial would seem the best bet, but your aerial installer would advise on the actual aerial needed after testing the signal strength: do wait until after 18 April for such a venture.

One final point. To work from two aerials requires the cable from each be joined at some point so only one cable is connected permanently to your tv or set top box (stb). That joining is via a device called a diplexer. A diplexer will lower the signal strength at your tv/stb. A single aerial receiving from just one transmitter will therefore always provide a higher signal to your receiver than that from a two-aerial diplexed arrangement. The difference is not large but could be significant.