I’ve just had a look at the “Consumer View” for my area on digitaluk.co.uk and noticed that all of the stations that were tuned in via channel 33T2 have a little “aerial” icon next to them which denotes that a “wideband aerial” may be required to get those stations.

Looking across the table to the next few re-tune events shows more and more stations having that requirement until 2020 when the vast majority of channels have this little icon next to them.

I had a look for images of wideband aerials and ours doesn’t look like any of them. They, generally, show a wide-delta-shaped ‘back bit’ (whatever it’s called) while ours is the sort of basic thing you would see in the “Coronation Street” title sequence from the 80s. Actually, there are three aerials stuck to the chimney so I’m not sure which one is being used, but they are all very old.

As http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/operations/multiplexes says, “COM7 and COM8 are interim multiplexes…” so it sounds like they are still “temporary” but it really depends on what they mean by “interim”.

I notice that they – COM7 and COM8, along with BBCB – have the highest useful bitrate, which might be why they’re used for the HD stations, but that’s outside my realm of expertise to have any real opinion on.

Ah well, we’ll see what happens sometime in the next few months when we get someone round to look at the aerial (when the weather is a bit nicer for going up on a roof).