SIR – Your correspondents on the digital TV switch-over have missed the obvious parallel.
Back in the 1960s, when a compulsory switch from town gas to natural gas was imposed, the whole exercise was carried out by skilled engineers, on the premises, and at no cost to the customer.
If old gas appliances could not be converted, new appliances were provided, free of charge. So why have we let them charge us a penny for digital TV?
Those who maintain that if you currently get an analogue signal, you will get a digital signal, are not telling the full story.
Many houses, for reasons of topolography or tree proximity, currently only receive a mediocre analogue signal, but at least with analogue the effect is just an occasionally fuzzy picture or a switch from stereo to mono sound.
Once digital comes along, it’s a binary world – the signal either works or it doesn’t, there’s no ‘snowy picture’ option: it simply won’t work. Folk in those locations will need either to subscribe to cable services or install satellite equipment, at even greater expense.
Yup, things were so much better in the caring 1960s.
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