I thought according to join freesat sky had bought a slot for sky news well unconfirmed anyway.

http://www.joinfreesat.co.uk/index.php/page/7

Sorry double post please delete.

I too would like to be able to subscribe to sports (& HD) on Sky without taking all the other rubbish in the base package. (I'm sure many others would agree)

How can you claim to be a big football fan & also claim to be happy with the meagre offerings of ITV & BBC.

I am sorry but the two do not equate

Exactly, unconfirmed, and six months ago - why would Sky pay Freesat to go on their EPG, for such little return.

You never know, it might happen?, but I would have thought it's pretty unlikely in the short to medium term.

To lure more sky viewers.

Too small a pool to be worth luring, and I suspect it's more likely to lure viewers away from Sky

It wouldn't lure very many. The number of people who watch any form of TV news is pretty small. I used to but I've been getting my news from multiple Web outlets for years now. Those that still happy to be fed whatever line the broadcaster wants at a time that suits the broadcaster are presumably shared between the BBC and ITV and Sky.

The number of people who are so desperate to watch Sky news that they'd install a whole new system just to get it must be vanishingly small.

I agree, although personally I enjoy watching news beyond what's shown on BBC and ITV, e.g., the other news channels on Freesat. I like seeing different news stories, interviews and alternative perspectives.

In fact, apart from sports most of the TV I watch live is news. Most other stuff I tend to record and watch at a time of my choosing.

Yup, that's what I do with the web. I always check out the BBC and CNN then if a particular story interests me I started digging deeper. You sometimes learn more from seeing the different viewpoints than you do from the story itself, lol.

Quite right, Nigel.

Once they see how much they can get without paying Sky extra for their dross channels they would be very likely to dump Sky.

With Freeview starting to launch HD early next year in winterhill and then Crystal palace.

Surely those will need to be fairly full time HD channels (including ITV) and will also be on Freesat ?

If not the time and effort they are putting into making the system work with HD , including the national retune on the 30th, would be a great waste of time as no one will bother to buy the HD boxes.

Lol, dream on.

Freesat was never intended to be a competitor to Sky and it doesn't even come close. It's useful as another source of programming for when two tuners in my Sky+ and the other two in my DTT PVR aren't enough but that's about it.

Most of what I watch comes from Sky's PTV channels and whilst some of it eventually filters down to FTx it's usually at least a year old. Maybe two.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone is like you.

There are many people who have dumped Sky - a lot have said so on this forum.

What tends to happen is that they have bought into Sky being completely unaware that you don't need Sky to receive may of the channels (some got into DSAT when a lot more channels were encrypted) and have then discovered that they rarely, if ever, watch any of the Sky dross (obviously this does not apply to sports or cinema subscribers).

When they do an audit they find that most, if not all, of what they actually watch is FTA channels.

I have 'converted' several people to Freesat (inc FSFS) myself, simply by suggesting they keep a log of what channels they actually view. Few people are prepared to pay ~£18 a month if they find they just watch a couple of hours (or less) of Sky a week.

I never implied otherwise. I merely pointed out that Sky offers a lot that Freesat doesn't. That's probably why it continues to be very successful.

Your wishful thinking isn't going to change that. You should be careful pushing people onto Freesat because it could well backfire. It is good at what it is supposed to be - an alternative to Freeview for those in very remote areas. It was never intended to compete with Sky and it never will.

Maybe over time it will pick up more HD content but I suspect it will always lag behind Freeview where it matters. It will need a significant change of management direction if it is to be anything other than the last out of four TV delivery mechanisms. Given the parlous state of FTV in this country I think it unlikely that such a change will occur. The money simply isn't there at the moment. It might never come back especially if next gen broadband actually comes to fruition.

My prediction is that history will look back on Freesat as a stopgap measure. It might last a decade or so but then it won't be needed any longer. Then again I suspect there's big changes all round. I think Sky are well aware of this and are chomping at the bit to get VoD up and running. I can imagine that in fifty years time Sky are no longer using satellites. Maybe they'll rename themselves 'Ground'

It's very obvious that Sky offers more TV than Freesat. That's why some people are prepared to pay through the nose for it and why, as you say, it continues to succeed.


Can I just explain something to you?

'Wishful thinking' is positing a situation that does not exist and expounding that situation as if it were certain to happen.

That is not what's happening here.

I'm talking about an actual situation where people have dumped Sky as a result of noticing that they watch no, or hardly any, TV from pay channels.

Can you see the difference.


How is it going to do that? If at any point one of the people who dumped Sky decides they want one of the pay channels they can easily resubscribe.


Not that old saw again.

When customers who decide to go digital can choose between Freesat and Sky, Freesat is competition for Sky. They lose revenue because people are using Freesat instead of paying for their service.

Of course, Freeview is much more serious cometition for Sky.


Any yet there are millions who are perfectly happy with it.


Yes.

Like analogue.


With the rate of change in electronic goods and the services that support them I'm only really concerned as to whether if lasts the next 2 years.

Well i am a massive sports fan in general, Football, Cricket, Golf, Rugby League, Motor Sport and others...

But i ditched $ky last year as it was just not VFM for the amount of sport i have time to watch. I was watching about 5-6 events a month on $ky for £37 a month and felt it was just not worth it. I never really watched anything else on $ky apart from sport. Maybe the occasional documentary but most of those were repeats that have already been on the BBC.

The only real down side for me is the monopoly $ky have on cricket, every other sport i can think of is served reasonably well on FTA channels. In fact with the exception of cricket there is probably much more live sport on FTA than there was 25 years ago.

I can see winterhill from my house so can't wait for this. I'm led to believe it will start before Xmas but there may not be any decoding devices ready by that time.

You should be ok then ... I wonder how many people will get good enough reception for HD, am I right in presuming that someone who is borderline for SD Freeview will not have a good experience ?

The reception conditions for HD are the same as SD. There is just less channels in a mux than SD.

The only remaining question being whether the HD compression method will make uncorrected errors more of a drama than they are on SD.

According to all the blurb S2 is more robust than S1 so a very marginal S2 signal should perform better than a S1 signal (whether HD or SD is not relevant).

We already have HD digital aerials advertised as the latest rip off for the unitiated. The HD compression method is H264 mpeg4 same as used on HD sat transmissions for ages.

Who says a football fan requires a TV?

How about actually going to a sports event, rather then sitting in front of the tv and getting fat and getting second rate commentary when you could go and watch the real thing for yourself.

I just use my Foxsat to record HD progs saving my V+ HDD space.As for channels on freesat they are basically what I watch and record,but the Foxsat sd pq is not up to the V+ sd pq, plus I get ESPN HD with my Virgin package for some footie so I keep the V+.If you haven't got Sky or cable then Freesat is a must have.
I do think the Foxsat HD pq is slightly superior to the V+ HD pq tho.

Money?

You can't fast forward the real event, that is the one great invention I can't live with...