From 8 March all the television channels of national broadcasters will be visible in high quality and citizens will have to retune their TV or decoder to continue watching their favorite programs. The Mise recalls this by explaining that if, following the retuning, the TV or decoder are not enabled to receive the signal with the new technology, citizens will be able to replace them using the bonuses made available by the Ministry. In fact, the path towards the new digital TV continues, which in this phase of the roadmap provides for the activation of the MPEG-4 encoding and the discontinuation of the MPEG-2 encoding for digital terrestrial television broadcasting.
Until 31 December 2022, national television broadcasters, whose channels are positioned on the remote control between numbers 1 and 9 as well as from number 20, will in any case continue to transmit simultaneously with both encodings. For local television broadcasters, the coding change will continue to take place by geographical area, simultaneously with the stages of the ‘refarming’ process, which has already taken place in Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta and Trentino Alto Adige, and is currently being concluded in Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia Romagna. The other regions of Central and Southern Italy will subsequently be interested in the passage of coding on the basis of the frequency reorganization schedule established by the Ministry.