Websites telling TV viewers how to re-tune their digital
Freeview TV boxes have crashed under demand.
In July, the government's
national flu
website was
swamped within minutes of going live.
Designers of the flu advice website admitted they had
underestimated demand and they were forced to quadruple capacity to
keep the service going.
The Freeview service was upgraded this week to give more viewers
access to channel Five, but thousands of boxes had to be re-tuned
after frequencies were changed.
Freeview's website and another site designed to tell users how
to retune boxes, crashed yesterday because of a spike in demand,
according to the
Telegraph.
The Freeview telephone helpline was also hit by up to 200 calls
a minute from viewers wanting to know how to restore services.
More than 500,000 homes will be able to receive Five on Freeview
for the first time after the upgrade, but about 460,000 households
are expected to lose access to ITV3 and ITV4.
Freeview estimates that the upgrade, which will also give access
to high definition services, will require user to re-tune 25
million TVs and set-top boxes.