Second-time lucky for digital television
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Your support makes all the difference.The simplest way to try to understand digital television – and this is addressed to the 99 per cent of the population that finds phrases such as "digital terrestrial television platform" and "free to air" confusing – is to pretend that nothing has happened so far: pretend that you have never heard of ITV Digital and a business disaster that involved paying much too much money for second-rate football.
Start again. New technology means that you can have 24 free channels on your television, including the five you already have. By transmitting in digital form, more channels can be squeezed into the signal received by your aerial. All it needs is an electronic box of tricks, which costs about £100, or a bit more for a fancier version.
That was effectively the decision of the television regulator yesterday. It was a triumph for the BBC. It means the public service broadcaster has secured six free television channels and its future in the new regime. There will be those who will be nervous of the three channels allocated to Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB. Certainly, the deal required Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, to sup with the would-be media monopolist using a short spoon. It would have been better if a small number of channels had been reserved for subscription services, a market in which BSkyB has a dominant position. But BSkyB has proved itself an efficient, consumer-oriented company in running satellite and digital channels, and there is no reason why it should not have this limited foothold in the new market.
The advantage of the collapse of ITV Digital is that it allowed lessons to be learnt. There will be fewer channels, so that the quality can live up to the original promise of being better than existing television. We now know about the wrinkle of not being able to watch and record different digital channels at the same time, so that the makers of video recorders can deal with it.
And the regulator has realised that the Government cannot switch off existing television broadcasts in 2010 unless the same channels are available to everyone on digital for free.
Sometimes new technology can mean (nearly) everyone wins. It is just that it can take two tries to get it right.
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