The only reason I went for Freesat was because my Freeview picture was so unreliable. Good decision. I refuse to pay for TV. Did some research on the available boxes and the Humax was a no brainer. Got a recorder for our main room and a standard Foxsat box for the kitchen. I'm blown away by both the boxes having had a Thompson box before that was utter pooh. The HD picture is stunning, just like looking through a window... Its extremely easy to use although I thought the handbook that came with both boxes was completely useless hardly explaining any of the features or the meanings of the techinical jargon used throughout.

Probably been asked a million times but I'm a newbee so I'll ask anyway... When will Freesat be offering more HD channels?

No one knows but it seems unlikely in the near future. For political and business reasons(*) there isn't much capacity available. In addition because of a slump in advertising and people refusing to pay to watch TV there isn't much money around.

If you want a decent amount of HD (like 30+ channels) you'll have to talk to Sky. Sometimes in life you actually have to pay for what you want

(*)Basically there isn't much of the 'UK only' capacity left. There's tonnes of capacity on the 'All of Europe' satellites but then the broadcaster has to either encrypt (like Sky do) to restrict viewing or else pay the rights to broadcast in English to all of Europe (which would be an horrendous cost).

Tbh no-one involved in satellite broadcasting should be proud of this situation.

Sky could choose to release the UK only capacity they are using and move stuff to encrypted on the other satellite (but they risk damaging their service and they were there first).

Freesat could've chosen to implement some sort of encryption system so they could use any satellite (but that would have made the system more costly to run and apparently the BBC were dead against it).

The rights holders could choose not to be so damn' mean and avaricious (but then it's their product and they have the right to dictate payment rules).


Rumour has it that a competitor to Sky with a more open platform is going to launch soon. It'll have a tough battle to succeed but if it manages it it'd could be good. That plus Sky being forced - eventually - to wholesale its offerings might finally free things up.

..then again it might just cripple the one successful TV company broadcasting in the UK and reduce the entire market to a cash-starved mess.

I'd be quite happy for just BBC1,2 and ITV1 to be HD. You go back to the standard picture after HD and its frankly dreary!

I've noticed that the SD picture is not nearly as sharp as it was on freeview. Any reason for this?

Yes. Some channels (ITV1 being a prime example unless you live in the South West) are transmitting with reduced resolution and/or reduced bandwidth.

In ITV's case it's because their regionalisation means they have to broadcast a lot of channels from satellite (every region has to be a separate channel) and so need to keep costs down by minimising bandwidth.

As regards SD v. HD - I agree. Like a lot of things you notice it most when you go back to SD. At the moment I'd say 80% of what I record is HD. If Living would stop fannying around and launch their HD service on Sky I could probably make that 90%.

For me more HD 'free' channels wouldn't be much use. Most of what I watch is not available on the free channels - or at least not until several months or a couple of years later. F1 in HD would be nice though - it's the only 'sport' I'm interested in.

The biggest grumble I have line up wise I find is not having some channels that are on freeview or that I'd expect to be made avaliable for free like Channel 4 HD.

Otherwise I can live with the number of HD channels avaliable at the moment - I know if I wanted more they're avaliable at a price. The frustration would be if HD channels eventually make it onto freeview but for the reasons outlined above don't make it onto freesat.