LOCALS are urged to familiarise themselves with retuning their TVs as the final step in Australia’s move to digital television takes place in Leichhardt from the middle of August.
“The relocation of digital television services across Australia is well underway and involves moving some or all digital television services at over 400 transmission sites nationally to new frequencies,” said Federal MP Warren Entsch.
“The first broadcasting site in Leichhardt that will be moved over is Wonga Beach, when the ABC, SBS, 7, WIN and Southern Cross services are scheduled to change frequencies on 13 August 2014.
“Channel changes for all other areas in the Far North will take place progressively until the end of this year.”
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.
“The process of retuning equipment should be pretty straightforward but there are a whole range of resources available should anyone need help,” Mr Entsch said.
“People can visit www.digitalready.gov.au/retune and put their address into the search engine to find out when they’ll need to retune their TV. They can arrange for an alert to be sent to them, and the website also has clear information about how to retune their TV and other equipment.
“There’s also a new Digital Ready Information Line (1800 20 10 13 from 8:00am 10:00pm AEST 7 days per week) where people can speak to an agent to find out their retune date and get instructions on how to retune equipment over the phone.”
The Department of Communications has advised that there may be some service outages in the lead-up to, and including, the retune date, as engineering works are undertaken on the transmission site.
However channel changes should not impact on the existing quality of television transmission or reception across an area.
