You can’t stop the signal
Television has certainly come a long way.In the beginning, all the TV shows were black and white (or as they’re called now, “classics”). This made shows such as “Pot Black” very hard to watch because the balls all seemed to be the same colour.
Of course, we had to “tune” our televisions first. This involved someone standing on the roof moving the antenna while another person stood in front of the TV yelling out “No, still snow”.
Later on we got colour television, where everyone turned the colour up to “sunburn”. Every TV show, including the news, became “Invasion of the orange people”.
(We also learned the real reason Pot Black was so hard to watch: it was dead boring.)
After that came video recorders, which let us record one TV show while watching another. And then later, after waiting ten minutes for it to rewind, we’d all swear and curse because we forgot to change the channel on the VCR.
Since then everything has become digital. (“Digital” is a Latin word meaning “impossible for parents to understand”.) These days we can buy movies on DVD or get our kids to download them from the Internet. We can record TV shows on recorders with hard drives that let us quickly delete a show we’ve been looking forward to for weeks by mistake.
And this summer we say goodbye to the signal that had so many of us standing on those rooftops.
On the 3rd of December, those of you in this purple area will suddenly be without your old analogue TV signal. (We don’t know why your suburb is purple, and quite frankly we don’t want to know.)
Most of you won’t notice the difference because your television will be able to pick up the digital TV signal that’s replacing it. In fact, you might be using it already. If your TV can get ABC 2, ABC 3 and ABC supplementary number 36, you’re already on the digital TV network and your kids have been making you get up on the roof for nothing.
But if your TV can’t pick up the digital signal, then you’ll be left staring at a blank screen.
Now, considering ratings season will probably be over by then it may not be such a bad thing. But if you want to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the cricket, the tennis or all those “encore performances” (also known as “repeats”), you need to get in touch with Home Appliance Rentals.
Home Appliance Rentals has a range of LCD and plasma televisions to suit your needs and your budget. And they all have built-in tuners that can pick up the digital signals. Not that you’ll need to worry about that, because Home Appliance Rentals will not only deliver your television, they’ll set it up for you as well.
That’s right! You won’t have to climb onto the roof ever again.
So contact Home Appliance Rentals now and switch to the digital signal. Then when they switch the analogue signal off, visit your neighbours and ask how they’re all faring.
But you may have to yell, because they’ll probably be on the roof.
Maybe something about switching to digital, I believe Sydney is the last to switch which will go ahead Dec 2013! For more info: http://www.digitalready.gov.au/
On 3 December 2013, Sydney and surrounding areas highlighted in purple will switch off their analog TV signals and switch to digital-only TV.
