Digital TV Advice > Digital TV Aerial

Digital TV Aerial

You may need to upgrade your TV aerial in readiness for the Digital TV switchover, and on this page you can find links to local aerial installers all over the UK.

Aerial Upgrade Test

You can check your reception with the Teletext test. Visit Teletext page 284 where there is an aerial test; the test is a guide to the likelihood of digital reception using your existing aerial and can be found on BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and S4C (a Welsh-language version is available on S4C page 484). The test is unsuitable if you have a shared aerial and in areas where the postcode checker indicates that an aerial change is required.

If you get good test results you are unlikely to need to replace your aerial. Bad test results mean you are highly likely to need to replace your aerial but Digital UK recommend you wait until after switchover to see if your home will actually be affected to avoid having unnecessary work done.

The digital switchover is split into the 14 TV regions of the UK; from North to South they are STV North (Scottish Highlands (except Fort William and Lochaber which are STV), Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and parts of north Fife), STV Central (central Scotland), Ulster (Northern Ireland), Border (south of Scotland, much of Cumbria and the Isle of Man), Tyne Tees (north east England), Granada (Manchester, Preston, Liverpool and Cheshire), Yorkshire (Harrogate, Leeds, Sheffield, with Hull in Humberside, Lincolnshire and parts of Norfolk), Wales (from Anglesey and Wrexham down to Swansea and Cardiff), Central (Birmingham and Nottingham down to Oxfordshire in the south), Anglia (most of Norfolk, Suffolk, parts of Essex, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire), London, West Country (Devon, Cornwall and parts of Somerset and Dorset), West (Cheltenham in Gloucestershire down through Bristol to Taunton) and Meridian (Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Wiltshire and the Isle of Wight).

How about visiting Dial to Save - they have detailed reviews and price comparisons on contract, pay as you go and sim free mobile phones as well as broadband internet access and low cost international calls to any country from landlines and mobiles. You can even get a free mobile phone.