A new alert has been issued to UK homes using Freeview with the popular service warning customers they might suffer some annoying interference due to current weather conditions. A band of high pressure has hovered over Britain and that means TV signals aren’t as reliable as usual.
“Freeview viewers across South West England and South Wales could see some disruption to their TV reception,” Freeview confirmed.
“This is due to high pressure which could disrupt the TV signals which Freeview uses.
“You are advised not to retune your TV during this time – reception will be restored once the high pressure passes.”
Although rare, these weather issues do affect Freeview screens at points throughout the whole year and if you find your viewing is being ruined by this phenomenon then it might be worth checking out a different way to tune into live and on-demand content.
Freely is a relatively new service in the UK with this platform, which is actually owned and run by the same team behind Freeview, beaming content to living rooms via the web instead of an aerial. It works just like a standard terrestrial platform with users able to skip through channels without needing to launch dedicated streaming apps such as iPlayer or ITVX.
Because shows, movies and sporting action arrive using broadband it won’t ever be hit by issues caused by the weather.
Of course, if your broadband goes down there will be problems tuning in but as long as you have a reliable connection to the web you should get a perfect picture 365 days a year.
Freely includes a full TV guide along with on-demand recommendations and a neat Mini Guide which shows what’s on now and next.
You can also pause live TV and search for things to view. You can find full details about Freely here.
The only thing to be aware of is that Freely is only available via new TVs with this service built in. A number of manufacturers including Hisense and Bush sell Freely tellies with prices starting from under £200.
Freeview continues to be the most popular way to watch free television but if you are fed up with the weather ruining your evening’s entertainment – or you don’t have an aerial – Freely is definitely worth a look.
What channels can you watch on Freely?
At launch, things are pretty limited. Freely says that around 30 channels such as BBC 1, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5, Film4, 5US, CBBC and CBeebies are now available to stream with more being added at a later date. It’s hoped that UKTV will launch its services soon which will add popular channels like Dave, W, Gold and Yesterday to the Freely planner. Watch this space.
