Digital television channel changes for New England Electorate: Joyce

26 May 2014

 

 

AS part of the final steps in Australia’s move to digital television, a relocation of digital television services across Australia are well underway, the Member for New England Barnaby Joyce said.

 

Mr Joyce said he’d been advised there is more than one broadcasting site where channel changes are expected for viewers in the New England electorate by the end of 2014.

 

The first broadcasting site that channel changes are due to occur is the site at Armidale North. At this site, the SBS, Prime, NBN and Southern Cross services are scheduled to change frequencies on 3 June 2014.

 

Mr Joyce there may be some service outages in the lead up to and including on the retune date, as engineering works are undertaken on the transmission site.

 

Mr Joyce said this process is known in the broadcasting industry as ‘restack’. Restack is necessary to achieve the Australian Government’s commitment to clear the digital dividend, and make spectrum available for new services such as mobile broadband.

 

The process of restack involves moving some or all digital television services at more than 400 transmission sites nationally to new frequencies. These channel changes will occur progressively until December 2014, with more than 70 sites already completed. Channel changes should not impact on the current quality of television transmission or reception across the area.

 

Once digital television services have moved to their final frequencies, viewers will need to retune their digital televisions, set-top boxes and digital recorders to continue to receive existing free-to-air digital channels in that area. Retune dates are published on the Department’s website and site-by-site information is available through the mySwitch tool at digitalready.gov.au/retune

 

Members of the New England Electorate can keep informed about future retune dates, service outages and channel changes by visiting the retune website at digitalready.gov.au/retune

 

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