Digibox says no
This morning I turned on my digibox. It popped up the "new or changed channels" screen, and I told it to do a rescan. Which it did, happily reporting that 0 channels were found. WTF? It was working last night fine, and analogue signal was as good as it ever is (i.e. BBC2 is grainy but the others are ok). So I spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes searching for information on Ceefax on transmitter downtime, but they seem to have scrapped that page. To the internets! The internets proudly inform me that there are no known problems with my transmitter.
Hmm. I end up at the BBC Reception page, where I double-checked my predicted FreeView reception, which redirects me to the Freeview site. After furkling around here for another few minutes, I find this FAQ. I think a quote is in order here:
DMOL, the company which manages technical changes to the Freeview platform, will be making necessary network enhancements affecting some homes in the following regions;
...
23rd July 2008 -Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall.
...
The majority of homes will be totally unaffected but some early-manufactured digital boxes will stop working and viewers will need to replace their equipment to continue receiving the Freeview service.
And yes, my box (a Daewoo DS608P) is one of them. So I now own what is effectively a pile of plastic junk.
I particularly like the next bit:
The number of affected boxes represents around 1% of all Freeview equipment sold to date, although the number of people who’ve contacted Freeview and the manufacturers so far suggests the actual number could be much lower.
Now, some of those people won't have done rescans yet, so they won't have experienced the breakage. Even if they do, they'd have to be pretty tenacious to find out what has happened, since it has not been publicised at all, and the only information I've found about it is buried in the freeview site (as far as I can tell, there is nothing at all on the Daewoo site, even though they are responsible for at least 3 of the six broken models. I don't see why they couldn't have put up a firmware update for those models to put a warning message on the screen.
So tomorrow, I shall ring Daewoo and see what they have to say for themselves. I am fully expecting a resounding "Sod off, you'll just have to buy another digibox", but I may as well try.
What's particularly galling is that I'm moving in 2 months, and may or may not have Freeview reception in my new room. So I'm understandably cautious about buying a new settop box right now, but if I don't, I won't be able to tell whether digital will work or not.
Edit: After being on hold for 15 minutes, "Dave" from Daewoo says "we won't help you, you'll have to buy a new box". Which begs the question of why the Freeview site says to call them in the first place.
Hmm. I end up at the BBC Reception page, where I double-checked my predicted FreeView reception, which redirects me to the Freeview site. After furkling around here for another few minutes, I find this FAQ. I think a quote is in order here:
DMOL, the company which manages technical changes to the Freeview platform, will be making necessary network enhancements affecting some homes in the following regions;
...
23rd July 2008 -Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall.
...
The majority of homes will be totally unaffected but some early-manufactured digital boxes will stop working and viewers will need to replace their equipment to continue receiving the Freeview service.
And yes, my box (a Daewoo DS608P) is one of them. So I now own what is effectively a pile of plastic junk.
I particularly like the next bit:
The number of affected boxes represents around 1% of all Freeview equipment sold to date, although the number of people who’ve contacted Freeview and the manufacturers so far suggests the actual number could be much lower.
Now, some of those people won't have done rescans yet, so they won't have experienced the breakage. Even if they do, they'd have to be pretty tenacious to find out what has happened, since it has not been publicised at all, and the only information I've found about it is buried in the freeview site (as far as I can tell, there is nothing at all on the Daewoo site, even though they are responsible for at least 3 of the six broken models. I don't see why they couldn't have put up a firmware update for those models to put a warning message on the screen.
So tomorrow, I shall ring Daewoo and see what they have to say for themselves. I am fully expecting a resounding "Sod off, you'll just have to buy another digibox", but I may as well try.
What's particularly galling is that I'm moving in 2 months, and may or may not have Freeview reception in my new room. So I'm understandably cautious about buying a new settop box right now, but if I don't, I won't be able to tell whether digital will work or not.
Edit: After being on hold for 15 minutes, "Dave" from Daewoo says "we won't help you, you'll have to buy a new box". Which begs the question of why the Freeview site says to call them in the first place.