Telly technology confuses old people

all they had to do, was say plug this box into your TV, the cables only fit in 1 place, plug your ariel in

and enjoy better quality pictures, and more channels for FREE.

If the picture breaks up etc you may need a new high gain ariel

The BBC and everyone involved has turned this into a much bigger issue, and ovely complicated it.

Enough that rouge sales people are selling these older people new tv's etc and making them spend several hundred £ instead of £35 in Tescos.

this reminds me of a certain major PC retailer who sold a nun a new laptop and Office 2007, when all she wanted was MS Publisher (as apparently Publisher was not available for seperate purchase...), then when she was emailing her friends the documents, they couldn't open them as they were running office 2003, so she went back and told them the problem, and instead of telling her how to save in office 97-2003 format, they sold her Office 2003.


So now my license fee is being used to sell Sky to pensioners? Oh that's just great...

They should spend those millions on upgrading the "elderley and vulnerables" TVs to ones with built in freeview/freesat. Can you imagine explaning to your nan how to switch on the TV, set top box, switch to AV1 and use a different controller to change channel from the one that controls the volume?

J1M.

I still do not understand why the FCC and CE companies are spending so much effort on a demographic of people who have not fed an ounce of money in to the CE industry for many years. Yes I know the elderly need to get weather information if they live in a hazardous part of the world. So I think the converter box is a good idea. But why are we keeping the format of TV in 4:3 still? The majority of people feeding money in to the CE industry are people who own HDTV's. I think all television should have adopted the 16:9 widescreen format by now. So I guess I'm saying follow the money.

change is difficult for the elderly, but I don't think it's actually the tech that is confusing. It's just the "change" that is confusing. I admit to having a difficult time in converting my 80 year old father to HDTV but now that he has converted, he wonders why he was so resilient against it. HDTV signal has better sound, a bigger picture, more audible and visual clarity. HDTV is EASIER on the elderly with their failing senses to use HDTV. Sorry but I feel that this whole fear of switching from 4:3 to 16:9 is really just a solution searching for a non-existent problem.

Instead of piling more money into Murdoch's Sky, why not give Freesat (The BBC/ITV venture - http://www.freesat.co.uk) boxes and dishes out?
That way, it's supporting the PSBs, and pensioners won't be scared into forking out more cash when the inevitable "To keep your digital TV service, send us £££s" messages arrive from Sky.

Are barrack-room lawyers contending that The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, are bringing coals to Newcastle for grey pounds? Who let the dogs out in the manger? "Value for money" means the full monty for England. Why spoil the ship for a half pence worth of tar? These STBs have a SOP, already. If you insist on putting new wine into old wineskins, you'd be hard pressed to cork some in vintage. So are you going to brown-bag that Brown, or change the wine into water?
Even my dear old mum can sort the DVR, the remotes have improved, etc..

Seems that the digital switchover is being seen by Sky as an opportunity to foist not-so-freebies on unsuspecting customers just like the McAfee trial software they pop on the Sky Broadband CD. 

In fact, the old ninnies are making a lot of fuss about the digital switchover -- it's no harder than installing a VHS machine. 

Pity, though, that people organising the scheme have been seduced by Murdoch's millions into making the process more complex than necessary,

If ure not smart enough to figure out whats going to happen with the switchover, then you dont deserve to watch tv anymore. READ A BOOK. or does tax money need to help with that too? (again)

Whew! As a recent retiree I was thinking I was old. Thank goodness they did this study; now I know I still young and intelligent enough to walk and chew gum at the same time.


Axiomatic said: "I still do not understand why the FCC and CE companies are spending so much effort on a demographic of people who have not fed an ounce of money in to the CE industry for many years."

Old people are the only demographic who consistently vote (a major reason that politicians speak slowly and only in bumper-sticker slogans). Count on them getting all the free services their failing hearts desire.

I have no idea why our present government prates about 'free markets' and 'choice'. Increasingly most of us have neither. If we travel by train, we are forced to use Network Rail (or whatever it's called this week) stations and tracks, and whatever train company has bribed the government to get a temporary monopoly on services for the next n years. It's the same with TV. You have a choice of 'terrestrial' (which oddly seems to be the new word for 'aerial'), cable, or satellite. So far, so good. Oh, but if you want cable you have one choice: Virgin (Beardy, prop); and if you want satellite you have one choice: Sky (Dirty Digger, prop). Really, really weird. It's as if McBroon's lot are so unfamiliar with the very concept of free markets that they think you produce one by having the government chop the market up into segments, and then sell each segment to one monopolist.