I wasn't intending to spend much time on it - I just got caught up defending the idea against the flim-flam that certain people use to defend these practices.

There would be no point contacting Ofcom. It would need someone at a much higher pay grade to instigate the sort of changes that would be needed to sort this out.

That is a good and relevant point there, nwhitfield. lt's only really been in these past few months that advertising revenues have started to recover for the media sector.

l daresay many media groups put their expansion plans on hold and it may be many months yet before they have the confidence (and cash) to revive and implement them. l don't think the Freesat consortium can shoulder the blame for that.

Over the next six months to a year, what we might start to see is a stream of the advertising-funded satellite channels starting to join Freesat and add to the existing channel line-up.

I am happy with Freesat. The only thing I would love to see is a few more HD channels such as C4 and E4 HD, and ITV Player.

Doubt it very much - the problem is numbers dont add up for almost any channel that is currently encoded.

I dont know the exact figures but I can demonstrate using some hypothetical numbers here.

Suppose Channel Z which is in the entertainment pack gets 1p per subscriber per month from Sky.

Ball park figures there are 10 million Sky subscribers therefore Channel Z get £100,000 /month just from being scrambled.

Therefore if they want to join Freesat they have to make an extra hundred thousand a month in additional advertising from being fta just to make up the funding they currently get from Sky. Thats just not going to happen for more than a handful of channels

Has anyone mentioned the Electric Sofa "suite" of channels (geddit?) thats due in late Autumn? I assume they wil have a berth on Freesat.

Says 1st November here http://www.electricsofa.co.uk/ . Says sky and other platforms. Us Freesaters will have to wait and see..

It also says "free-to-air." Interesting stuff.

I Hope for FreeSat to say that ITV will give ITV2 HD, ITV3 HD & ITV4 HD to it's own EPG platform freely and also all other FTA channels that can join by Xmas.

BBC One HD with CH 4 HD & Five HD are come our UK Public TV.
Five USA with +1 and Fiver with +1 comes to Freesat this year.

A new channel made from all the UKTV channels like Dave, gold, yesterday, Eden and others as this part owned by the BBC and most of the shows are from BBC & ITV so copy rights should easy to cover cheaply. ( "UKTV Freestyle" )

BBC iPlayer becomes live and out of any Beta.
ITV iplayer goes live.
4 on Demand and Five On Demand come to Freesat.

That EPG is kept in order so the channels are given room for any +1 and HD channel that a TV company put on FreeSat HD & Radio is put to end EPG as ALL other system do and TV is what Public TV system should be about. DAB system is for radio.....

And new box and software update for boxes with card slots to bring some pay per view service on top with new channels need copy rights coding until an new UK only beam comes along.

With hopes and wishes for our public Tv system "freesat"

No chance of getting the ITV HD channels before Christmas as they have already said they are going to be on subscription on Sky...and any FTA channel that wants to join Freesat can...it's up to the channels to pay Freesat for a slot on the EPG.

However, as they are such lame channels, Sky are welcome to them.

They'll be no chance of ITV2, 3 or 4 HD anytime in the next 2yrs, probably longer depending on what contract they enter with $ky.

So is this from the ashes of Film24? I know at the start of the year, before Film24 was put up for sale, that someone in these forums said they were planning several new channels and intended to have a presence on Freesat.

Update: I just spotted Film24 sale 'near to completion'. It says new owner will be unveiled shortly. Electric Sofa perhaps?

I watch ITV 3 and 4 a fair bit but don't consider them so important that I'd pay to see them in HD. In fact I don't consider any channel so important that I'd pay to see it in HD.

Yep its the same people.

The transponder that quite a few people believe/speculate that Channel 5 will be joining is almost freed up and ready to go. The remaining two channels have started testing elsewhere for a transponder move so we could see some tests beginning on the transponder very soon for whatever channels are moving to it. Hopefully it's all the Channel 5 regions together with FIVE USA, FIVER and their +1's.... Hopefully

Do you have a source for that?

Let's hope that the "Sky...as well as other platforms" includes Freesat.

Update: I found a thread from July on this that I missed and that contained a link - British Film Channel Launching On Sky.

There are 2 reasons we still have a Sky box,

(1), because it has an RF out (which currently goes to our Kitchen TV)
(2), sky3 because of Road Wars and UK Border Force.

Paddy

Could you give the details of this transponder and the channels involved as I'd like to keep an eye on this.

Thanks

Richard

The transponder is 10.876 V 22.000 5/6 on Astra 2D.

Thanks for the reply Paddy. Appreciated.

Very true, NEWLINEtv, but in many parts of the country it is also possible to access Sky 3, Fiver and Five US via Freeview and combine that with Freesat as some Forum Members have already done.

Is this $ky the same as Free$at ? or Briti$h Ga$ and Briti$h Telecom

The answer has to be YE$

Having thought about what might happen to Tp 10876V, is it not more likely that ITV will get it for the regions that are currently not on freesat rather than it being for C5 and family? Could it not be part of the deal that sees ITV 2,3,4 HD on Sky? I would prefer C5s. What do people think?

Hands up all those who were hoping Virgin 1 / Channel One would go fta "because they are fta on DTT". No chance of that happening now after todays announcement....