What is Freesat?

[Stuart Wright]

Freesat is a digital TV service from the BBC and ITV which broadcasts HD programming via satellites.
In order to receive Freesat, you need a box and dish installed, but once these are done there is no additional cost. No subscription fees .
Freesat will be available to nearly all UK households when it launches in Spring 2008.
For more information visit the official Freesat website.

[mistryn]

as in that link its says its available form spring 08 but does anyone know if it will be available earlier or already out?
and what sort of prices this will retail for?

[J7MAN]

Sky Freesat is ~£150 so more than that I assume as it'll be a HD box.

[mistryn]

do you know if it will be released earlier?

[J7MAN]

I'll be honest and say I hadnt heard of it until this thread. Not via satellite anyway.

[mistryn]

no problemo, just done a quick google search and freesat is available from sky now but not the HD version of it

£150 for the dish/box and installation
£20 for sky card if you already have the equipment

HD box i think you have to wait until release date

[J7MAN]

Yeah I have Freesat so I can get Setanta without a full Sky package as my Freeview is PC based so this is interesting.

[thegeby]

It is somewhat depressing that it only took 40 minutes after a clear and informative original post for the thread to end up in confusion.

Freesat (TM) owned by BBC, offering a new EPG with similar capabilities as the Sky EPG. None of the Channels (All BBC, ITV 1-4, extras) are encrypted in any way. The EPG (which will require a receiver with this specific capability) will only go live in spring 08.

Freesatfromsky(TM) owned by Sky, offers access to the Sky EPG, the same channels as above and in addition Channel 4, Film 4, five, five US and five Life. It costs GBP 20 for the card. You also need a Sky receiver.

Both systems use an identical dish pointing to the same satellite orbital slot (28.2E). The non-encrypted channels are the same. Channel 4 has stated that it will join Freeview(TM).

Any dvb satellite receiver can receive the non-encrypted channels.

[dan1979]

Some more info here as there's obviously some a bit confused by it all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freesat

I would expect there to be HD-compatible boxes at launch, part of freesat is about getting HD content to the masses without a subscription.

ITV and BBC showed the last world cup in HD so fingers are crossed we'll get the Euro's this year from them

[tonyadamson]

Originally Posted by thegeby

It is somewhat depressing that it only took 40 minutes after a clear and informative original post for the thread to end up in confusion.

Must really be a pain in the arse getting depressed so easily. Somewhat!

[njp]

I decided some time ago that my next PVR will be an HD Freesat PVR. My heavily pimped (and now ultra-stable!) Thomson DHD4000 is perfectly adequate for all my Freeview requirements.

If Freesat delivers higher bitrate SD channels as well as a reasonable amount of HD content, DD 5.1 audio and a high quality EPG, I can foresee a time (in the fairly near future) when I no longer use Freeview at all.

I also imagine that Rupert will not be best pleased, and that Freesat presents a considerable threat to his business.

What do other people think?

[dan1979]

Maybe... but as long as sky have the football and other major sports they'll always have a lot of subscribers.

[Stuart Wright]

Interesting that you could use your existing Sky dish.

Since our home cinema is down the garden, we don't have any external feed going to it at the moment, but I think I might consider a Freesat PVR installed in there if it's reasonably priced.

[Starburst]

Originally Posted by njp

I also imagine that Rupert will not be best pleased, and that Freesat presents a considerable threat to his business.

What do other people think?

Freeview hasn't hurt SKY so I can't see Freesat making any difference since it will never have the market penetration that DTT has now and like it or not millions still don't like the idea of a dish
As for losing existing subscribers I suspect it will depend upon exactly how many are ignorant of the fact you don't have to pay a monthly fee for the terrestrials and while in the short term channels like E4 and More4 going FTA could lose SKY some MIX subscribers that would have happened anyway with DTT expanding it's coverage.

Of course SKY could slash the price of their Freesatfromsky system making Freesat (for new users looks poor value) but whatever happens there is more choice and that can never really be a bad thing even for SKY subscribers.

[Starburst]

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

Interesting that you could use your existing Sky dish.

Since our home cinema is down the garden, we don't have any external feed going to it at the moment, but I think I might consider a Freesat PVR installed in there if it's reasonably priced.

I'll be replacing my PACE 2200 FTV box with a Freesat HD DVR, simple swap since I have the LNB feeds anyway and the SKY option for a second HD source is too expensive and well I don't have any faith in HD on Freeview.
My Humax 9200 Freeview DVR has proved to me that not only can someone else deliver and viable DVR but one that is less buggy and not tied to a subscription for full use.

It's about time that Dsat users had the option of a Freeview type service, we would have had it years ago if the UK terrestrials had taken SKY seriously and not considered them a joke.