Spanish Digital TV Changes in 2014

During January 2014 some of the Spanish digital television channels must vacate their current frequencies.

 

From the Costa Blana News - Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Digital TV re-tuning next year MORE than 300,000 communities of residents in the Valencia Region will have to pay in the region of €600 sometime over the next 12 months to have their TV antennas retuned so that they can pick up digital (TDT) transmissions. Two years after the analogue signal was switched off in Spain, the government is forcing property owners to pay to retune because it made a mistake when the TDT signal was first allocated. On January 1, 2014, the current TDT signal will be switched off - one year before the rest of the EU.

The affected frequencies have been sold to provide more frequency capacity for the 4G / LTE mobile broadband technology. It is thought that the "auctioning off" of theswe frequencies will result in an income of about 12,000 million euros (about 1% of GDP).

The frequencies of 790 megahertz (MHz) to 862 MHz are are currently used for the Spanish digital television channels, ranging from 61 to 69. With recent advances in encoding and compression techology of television signals, this will mean that there hsould be no reduction or loss of Spanish Digital Television channels.

This was one of the greatest fears of the change, as it was initially thought that there could have been a 50% reduction in the number of current channels.

Spanish Digital TV Changes in 2014 - how it can impac your viewing