so in otherwords its pointless buying a freesat hd box if you want hd content

buy a freeview hd box when possible

give satellite a few more years when Mr Murdoch has taken over the media world completely.Blessings be upon him

You could have corrected it?

I can't correct other peoples replies.

For the moment, perhaps. I do think though that if Freesat survives long term it will pick up more HD channels.

Freeview has limited space available to it so if/when HD becomes the expected standard Freesat will be sitting pretty. Until then I think all it can be is a sticking paster solution for the minority of people who can't get the proper thing.

Well spotted

Inferior in picture quality ...... really ?? ..... perhaps its your equipment that is at fault then because the picture quality I get on freesat is definitely better than that on Freeview.

ITV1 is one of the channels that has a much smaller picture resolution on Freesat compared to Freeview I'm afraid. And it is very noticeable on my 42" plasma- so much so, that if there is a good film or program on that channel, I tend to switch over to my plasma's built in Freeview instead.

Have a look at ITV1 South West either by adding it in non-freesat 10832 H or by changing your postcode to EX2 2JN

Well, as the current Freeview HD channels do not exist, and with the likelihood that over time those same main HD channels lined up for Freeview will also become available on Freesat, AND the Freesat HD services are available now, AND the Freeview platform is more limited in bandwidth, it's not as straightforward a choice as some might make out.

You can also look at both FreeviewHD and Freesat as complimentary to each other, and there might be no reason not to have both.

Of course it can.

For example:

For supper tonight, you can have sausage sandwiches

or you can have roast beef & yorkshire pud.

The one is still an alternative to the other, more so if you are very hungry and the sausages can be cooked in 15 mins whilst the roast beef will take 3 hours (thus delaying your meal by that time).

the perceived value of any alternative is dependant upon circumstances and taste.

Debateable. Where Freesat is concerned bandwidth is a big issue at the moment. They can only broadcast from 2D (at a reasonable price anyway) and there's precious little space left on it. I'm hopeful that by the time HD becomes mainstream things will have improved (for one thing 2D will be about to be decomissioned I think so something has to be done). If not then my prediction of more HD 'eventually' will be wrong as well.

Sky has oodles of bandwidth because it has a viewing card and encryption package that means channels can broadcast from Eurobird or any other satellite that hits the UK without having to pay pan-European rights.

Surely bandwidth will always be more constrained on DTT, even allowing for the improvement in compression technologies etc.

But leaving that aside, it is beyond little doubt that currently and into the immediate future DTT is much more bandwidth-constrained than satellite

Yes, pretty obviopusly, and FAR more expensive as well.


Considering they are selling terrestrial bandwidth off, it will certainly always be much more restricted.

I feel like a minority member - I subscribed to sky some years ago just for widescreen content! I'm currenltly on freeview and freesat because I can't justify (not even to myself) paying any more money for the content Sky offer.
If it's a good film, I have the blu ray or dvd. If it's good TV, it was on a free channel.

Well, right now, for me, Freesat is superior to Freeview.

Yes, the profile of Freesat is almost non-existent. I was only dimly aware of it until a former neighbour told me he'd got it. Then I started investigating...


I get the impression that there are loads of Sky customers who don't watch anything more than the terrestrial channels.

Hey everyone, I haven't been here for months and months! Just thought I'd check in to see if anything has changed - nope.

Sadly folks, Freesat isn't what it could have been, and never will be imho. People can say "it was never meant to compete with Sky" til they are blue in the face, but the reality is that it is barely competing with Freeview, let alone Sky. Sky have agressively locked down contracts to prevent many of Freeview's humble but decent channels from appearing on freesat, so the new boys don't stand a hope in hell. And because HD is coming to Freeview after analogue switch off, and iPlayer too, even those advantages will no longer be exclusive. Freesat is the poor man's Freeview, strictly for those who can't pick up a DTT signal.

With a heavy heart, I've concluded that Freesat is the new Betamax. I so wish it wasn't so, but that's how it is. But best of luck to all of those still fighting the fight!

Satellite in general, yes. But Freesat can't use all the available satellite bandwidth.

There's two 'kinds' of bandwidth available from satellite. Some of it nominally only covers the UK(*) - that's Astra 2D. Most of it though covers all of Europe - typically Eurobird at the moment but I think more is coming on stream later this year.

If you broadcast FTA (ie;in the clear) from 2D you only have to pay UK broadcast rights. If you broadcast from the other satellites you have to pay pan-European rights. Broadcasting English language content across all of Europe is very expensive - way outside of a free operator's budget.

Sky's encryption system gets around this problem because they can claim that cards are only sent to UK postcodes so no-one outside of the UK can decode the transmissions and thus they only have to pay for UK rights even though in some cases all of Europe can pick up the signal.

Astra 2D is already over subscribed and that's where Freesat hits a brick wall. They can only carry FTA channels and FTA means Astra 2D and Astra 2D is full.

So yeah - tons of capacity on satellite but none that Freesat can use.

(*)Okay so with a big dish you can get 2D outside the UK but officially it's UK only.

As I have stated many times, 2D is not full. There is space on ITV and BBC transponders for other channels including HD.

Maybe what I said was a little misleading. It has been reported on here by one member that the BBC are supposedly intending to reduce the bit rate on Freesat down to the same as that for Freeview which another member on here who has technical knowledge reports will in turn reduce the quality below Freeview because of the extra error correction needed to be included in the bandwidth alongside the transmission for satellite.

Assuming all of the above to be true, they are positioning Freesat as an inferior product to Freeview (at least in the future market place).


That's the best summary of the position of Freesat I've ever seen anyone type on here.

Reminds me of Dads Army, "we are all doomed I tell you.."

Apart from that worse case, hopefully unlikely scenario - If Freesat does go down the same route as Betamax in several years - I will have to polish up the old Tivo.. I bet that will be still going strong.. shame about the single tuner though.

Also - remember we would still have all the non freesat channels - it would need a decent upgrade though with a more extended EPG or/and better non freesat recording capability or perhaps hand over some of the source code to the users

Who knows what is going to happen..

Patrick

So it's not full as long as existing renters let other broadcasters use their capacity?

That would mean it's full then.

It is possible to negotiate with existing renters and shoehorn the odd channel in here and there but it's a tight fit. I'd say that Freeview/Freesat are about equivalent in that respect. Shuffle things around, come to agreements and you can get extra channels on both.

If I remember correctly 2D has encrypted channels that could be moved to other satellites to make space for fta.

Yes, there's plenty of ptoential space available, it's purely a question of negotiation and MONEY.

CH4 even have two entire transponders leased on 2D, which they currently sub-lease to other channels - presumably the reason for leasing them in the first place was in anticipation of going FTA, and sub-lease in the meantime.

I am very sceptical of this sat vs terrestrial is worse because of error correction claim, if they were all transmitted at the same fixed bitrate, they should all be the same. Freeview currently transmits more efficiently than sat because the channels are mixed up much more, so stat muxing is more effective - on the sat transponders you often get multiple copies of BBC One/C4/ITV1 so stat muxing is not very effective, or in the case of most of the BBC Ones they are all at a fixed bitrate.

No, my interpretation of it being full would be that there was no possibility to rearrange channels to fit more on, so it is just not factually correct to say it is full. Fiver and Five USA could be put on two ITV transponders with no rearranging at all, and when ITV1 W Country reduces bitrate, Five could be moved to that transponder to allow the BBC HD transponder to be freed up for ITV1 HD and Channel 4 HD.

Agreed.

I don't deny that things could be jiggled around and agreements reached - I know that's happened already. The main point I'm arguing against is the assertion that Freesat has significantly fewer bandwidth problems in the short term than Freesat.

The problems seem to be very similar. Bandwidth that Freesat could use is being 'withheld' by other broadcasters. Bandwith that Freeview could use is being 'withheld' by Ofcom in cahoot with telecoms companies.

In both cases, agreements between companies, a little common sense (hah) and consideration for the consumer (hah?) would resolve the problem.

Hmmm. Although 2D might not be long for this world anyway. Wikipedia says it was launched in 2000 with an expected lifetime of 12 years.

Maybe by then IPTV will be viable and no-one will care.

Oink, oink, flap, flap