Freeview has given important advice after a fire knocked out a number of services (Image: FREEVIEW)
Millions of Freeview users were hit by a hugely frustrating outage last night, which prevented them from accessing many of the popular channels on the service, including programs from the BBC and ITV. The problem was caused by a major fire at a transmitter in Bilsdale North York Moors, which is believed to have affected some 600,000 homes.
Although the fire is now under control by the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, the damage to the mast clearly needs to be repaired before a full service can be resumed and that could take some time.
Speaking to the BBC, the fire service said: “Only one building in a complex of four was affected and there are concerns about the structural integrity of the mast. A 300m exclusion zone has been established around the mast.”
With the outage potentially lasting for a while, Freeview is now offering important advice to anyone affected by the signal drop, with the television company warning users not to retune their set-top boxes as this will not resolve the outage.
“There is no need to retune your device, services will be restored once the issue is resolved,” the company said on its status page.
Anyone wanting to catch up on some TV needs their broadband rather than the rooftop antenna, with Freeview advising its customers to watch online services until everything works again.
“You can watch Freeview on some Internet-connected Freeview Play TVs, or a TV with players available to watch. You can still watch live and on-demand content from the likes of BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub or All 4,” advised Freeview.
“Alternatively, you can watch Freeview via our mobile app which is available to download for free from your app store or in a web browser via our online TV guide.”
The problems have caused chaos in much of the northeast, with some radio services also taken offline due to the fire.
Customers have complained about the loss of all their channels, with one Freeview fan saying, “All channels on my Bisdale tuned TV are turned off. I use an indoor antenna and it worked fine until about 1:30pm.”
Express.co.uk will update this article when we hear more about services being restored.
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