UK Parliament / Open data

Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill

I thank the Minister for that careful reply. It will be necessary to read carefully what he said. Clearly, there is a two-stage process. On the Whitehaven introduction, the essence of what the Minister said is that the maximum possible will be done and that audio description will be available on Sky, but probably not on other channels, although I do not know whether that is an entirely correct interpretation. But one will have to access through Sky in order to access audio description. It means that there will not be platform neutrality for Whitehaven in that respect, which is to be regretted. Nevertheless, one has to accept that perhaps that will happen early on, but what will happen thereafter? Is there a plan to replace unsatisfactory set-top boxes with set-top boxes that meet the core receiver requirement in future? It would be rather unfair for people in Whitehaven to be prejudiced by the fact that they are experiencing switchover rather earlier. I have not had the benefit of reading the core receiver requirement. Clearly, it would be useful if I was able to do so. I entirely accept that technology may change over time, but organisations are concerned about having the minimum. Of course, let us have more bells and whistles—as time goes on that will inevitably be the case. But there must be accessible remote control, voice output of channel announcement, identification displayed on screen, voice output of programme identification and so forth. There are very clear requirements for set-top boxes. I very much hope that the Minister can assure me that the core receiver requirement is essentially a set of minimum specifications that will be the entitlement of those eligible from Whitehaven onwards and that, for Whitehaven, those eligible will have the right to change to satisfactory platform-neutral set-top boxes.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
690 c267GC 
Session
2006-07
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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