A RETUNE of Freeview boxes has caused problems in some homes across Dorset and Hampshire.

More than 18 million homes across the UK needed to retune their set-top boxes and televisions after the multi-channel service was upgraded to give more homes access to Channel 5, as well as paving the way for the supply of high-definition television.

The latest retune comes after 500,000 digital terrestrial viewers across the South were moved to new frequencies in March.

Nigel Jarvis, from Jarvis Radio in Christchurch, said: “A lot of residents are having trouble with the re-tuning. Thankfully we have had better support from Digital UK than a few months ago so it has been somewhat a smoother experience in that respect.

“It is mainly elderly people who have been contacting us as they are frightened about tampering with their television for fear of losing channels or doing something wrong.”

Nigel said he had six engineers working on around 100 calls and he expected there to be in the region of 200 more booked in over the next three days.

He said that so far there have not been any problems once the retuning has been undertaken.

However, it is thought that around 20,000 older boxes would no longer work after yesterday with some people also losing access to ITV3 and ITV4.

The boxes which will no longer work are the Daewoo models DS608P and SV900, Labgear DTT100, Triax DVB2000T, Portland DP100 and Bush IDVCR01.

A spokesperson for TV Retune said that by 11am yesterday it had received around 15,000 calls.

He said: “We do understand that a number of people would have been confused by the retune but our website had instructions on it and we had automated instructions on our telephone helpline.

“We would advise elderly people needing some help to seek out friends and family or to consult their manuals.”

The upgrade is part of a series of changes to TV services in the region leading up to the switch off of all analogue services in 2012.