If there’s one place to find old TVs, it’s in rental apartments (and modest tourist accommodation). Because although I had my own Smart TV that I told you about, there was a 32-inch television in my apartment that served us as an auxiliary TV for the bedroom. We may face an unpleasant surprise due to the DTT outage planned for February 14: stay without watching television.

So before the bull caught us, I started working to take appropriate precautions. There is no general blackout on my old TV. and we can continue to enjoy the best content from February 14th.

I’ll give you some background information: It’s a Philips television with a 32-inch LED panel. We don’t have box or instructionsTherefore, we do not know the model. I know it’s only a few years old, it’s not a Smart TV, and it has an HDMI port on the back.

This is how I prepared my old TV for the DTT outage (and cleared all my doubts)

To be able to watch DTT in high definition it is a basic requirement that the device is compatible with HD resolution and this has been normal for a number of years, but if the television in question was purchased more than a decade ago then perhaps Negative. Likewise, you must have an HD tuner. How do I know if my old TV can play HD? Without specifications in hand to verify that the tuner is at least compliant with the standard DVB-T running on H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and, better yet, the DVB-T2 type compatible with H.264 and H.265 video codecs; The simplest thing is to browse through the channels to check if there are some channels broadcasting. in HD.

As you can see from these lines, my old TV can play content in HD because in fact it already is, although it needs a good readjustment due to the first 20 channels, only four of which are clearly HD. If you have an HD-compatible TV, whether an older model like mine or a newer model, here’s what you need to do after (or before) February 14: Retune to get rid of SD channels and so stay with the existing ones and edit the DTT channels later.

What happens if my TV is not HD compatible? If you can’t find even a single channel in HD after retuning, bad news. In this case we will have two options: to buy a DTT receiver that is compatible with the above-mentioned standards and, in my case, with HDMI connection.

If our television does not have HDMI, there are alternatives connected using the Scart connector. This option starts from around 30 Euros and is only interesting if we want to watch DTT. Of course, for about the same price and taking into account that my television is not 4K, I can watch TV over the internet by turning it into a Smart TV with devices such as Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite.

Since this is a secondary television, I can also use an old Chromecast I have at home to cast content from my TV, so I don’t spend a single euro and can still enjoy the benefits of the TV. But if this were my main TV, I’d probably consider upgrading and buying a new Smart TV.

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On Xataka Home Page | DTT outage also affects existing TVs: Here’s what you need to do on (or before) February 14