North West TV viewers are being reminded to retune their Freeview digital boxes today to keep receiving all the available channels.
The major retune is mainly being carried out to increase the number of homes which will be able to receive channel Five.
However, those who have channel Five at the moment will be unable to watch it until they have retuned. Some older set top boxes will cease to work at all.
ITV3, ITV4 and some BBC radio stations will also be affected.
About 460,000 households are expected to permanently lose access to ITV3 and ITV4.
The technical changes behind the upgrade will eventually enable high-definition (HD) television to be broadcast on Freeview. HD is already available on the free-to-air satellite service Freesat.
Ilse Howling, managing director of Freeview, said: “These are significant and necessary changes which will immediately bring Freeview viewers new channels, introduce new homes to existing channels and prepare the platform for the future availability of Freeview HD.”
All Freeview TV sets, set-top boxes and digital recorders, including TopUp TV and BT Vision boxes will need to be retuned from lunchtime. The upgrade will affect around 18million UK homes.
To find out how to retune, consult your instruction manual or visit the TV Re-tune website for a comprehensive list of re-tune guides.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here