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Two reasons:

- The UHF spectrum has run out of space - The only way forward is to either change the format for digital analogue to MPEG4 and then you may make space for say 1 or 2 extra streams to every 4 MPEG2 streams (its hard to say though as some channels like BBC One stream as high as 4Mbps+ and other stream as low as 2Mbps), or you can shut off analogue TV and then for every analogue channel, you should be able to squeeze in around 16 - 24Mbps per channel turned off.

The latter proposal is the best, as it will also allow the opening up of the spectrum for other technologies, such as wireless internet and HDTV etc..

Sky, should they gain approval to launch their "Picnic" service, will be streaming 4 channels in their current space of 3, by transmitting one of them in the MPEG4 format, squezzing it in alongside the other 3 which will be MPEG2 (Sky Sports News is only streamed in 2Mbps on DTT, so they have space for an MPEG4 stream, just lol).

There is some concern over whether MPEG4 can interfere with MPEG2 signals and also whether it can cause problems for boxes that cant decode MPEG4, as they will see the channel but wont know what to do with it. As yet, none of this is proven.

The fundamental problem with changing to MPEG 4 is of course the fact that people will need to purchase new hardware to recieve the channels once again, and at this critical stage of DSO this would be fatal in all likelyhood.

- The other reason the government want to turn analogue off is to generate more money from selling off more multiplexes and space on the UHF spectrum - they will be likely to sell of space for billions of pounds!!

Fair enough thanks matty..