Originally Posted by jchamier:
“Just contrast the UK and US approach to this! UK was about 8 to 12 years - the USA did the cutover in a weekend. :-/”
Originally Posted by Daveoc64:
“You're ignoring that the US is a very different market to the UK. The majority of people in the UK get their main TV via terrestrial - in the US it's just 1 in 10. The change was inherently more disruptive in the UK.
Comparing a 2G or 3G switchover might be just as complicated.”
It took so long for us because it was decided that every transmission site had to be rebuilt with modern technology and proper redundancy. IIRC the original digital transmission network was done on the cheap and it was done quickly to allow for the original launch date (first DVB-T commercial transmissions worldwide, I think).
We don't have an army of broadcast engineers, and people who are prepared to go up 200m masts, so those who will had a very busy few years doing all that work.
The US didn't have the same issue, and they had a lot more people (basically every TV station owns their own transmitter, and thus they all have a team of engineers to maintain it). FWIW the US did take several years from launching digital TV, to announcing analogue closedown, to actually doing it - and they did extend their deadline once. They also had an expensive programme of handing out digital tuners to people via taxpayer money, whereas we let the market slowly build up the install base