Residencial Muscaret Television

To those of you living on Muscaret

You maybe didn't know if you are connected to Sky and all you watch is British television, but there is now a way to get Spanish digital television even if you don't have an arial.

All the houses are interlinked by underground cables, as we all initially paid for cable TV that we didn't get in the end up, but the cabling is there.

Did you ever wonder what that box is just on the inside of your front door, the one low down on the wall that flashes with a green light every now and again?

No it's not spy cameras, or a 'big brother is watching you' scenario, that's your cable box, and it connects to every other house on the estate.

So you don't have an ariel, but someone else does.

Get a TV engineer to change some wires around (or whatever it is they do) and hey presto! You now have perfect picture TV (well nearly perfect picture - it comes and goes a bit).

If you have a digital TV, just switch it on, and use the 'audio' button on the remote control to change the language to English when they are showing English speaking films or TV programs like 'Lost' or 'Merlin'.

If you don't have a digital TV, you will find that your analogue TV picks up 2 Spanish channels. I've no idea what they are - we never got them before - but they must be getting transmitted on an analogue signal because the digi TV doesn't pick them up.

If you want to have the ability to change the language on them, you will need to buy a TDT box as mentioned at the start of the last article.

Television in Spain

As I'm sure we are all aware, Spain changed from analogue to digital television transmission recently. In the week before the changeover, the shops were full of TDT boxes for sale, knowing full well that most people didn't have a digital TV to accept the transmissions.

And no, they weren't all that cheap either, being in the €40 price range each on average.

The problem is that large parts of Spain are mountainous, with limited television reception. Huge pockets never received a good analogue signal, and these same pockets now receive no television at all. Digital, while on a tighter waveband, also needs crystal clear reception to give a watchable picture.

I was listening to a Spanish radio station talking about the problem, and went away with the impression that something like 60% of the country has lost their TV transmissions, but I may be mistaken and the actual figure is a lot lower.

Another case of moving too quickly without the necessary infrastructure in place.