Don't shoot me, I'm only passing on a snippet of information which isn't 100% substantiated.

Anyway, expats don't pay a TV licence so why should they automatically have a 'right' to watch BBC News, BBC World News is technically for territories outside the United Kingdom. I do take your opinion that they may want to keep it on 2A to compete with Sky news in the expat market but don't forget there's a lot of interactive sports feeds on those transponders too so this could be a long standing agreement for the BBC to switch these to spot-beam.

Either way, we'll likely find out mid September.

bbc technical not post info about switch to astra 1n

They possibly will given time, depends whether it happens or not though. We'll have to wait and see.

We Live IN Europe. WE can ALL Receive the European (Eg. FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN Etc Etc. FTA Transmissions ANYWHERE in EUROPE)... SO WHY Oh WHY are you so SMALL MINDED?
We all pay TV Licence fees in the country we live in. ie. A FRENCH EXPAT who lives in the UK pays his TV LICENCE TO THE UK but ACTALLY WATCHES FRENCH TV....and VICA VERSA a UK EXPAT Pays his TV LICENCE TO THE FRENCH and watches UK TV.... is that such a problem???????

^^

Only to expats who live outside the 2D/1N spots

thank God for the Internet!!!!!

And for VPN's

My relatives live in the Canaries and my comments are as applicable to them as they were to everyone else. They don't live in the UK, have sold their house over here so pay no TV licence. The BBC have an arm responsible for marketing and selling it's products abroad via subscription which I fully support as it helps pay for the beeb which IMHO is a fantastic organisation.

If expats want BBC services then take out a subscription to BBC Entertainment at 23.5E, BBC World News is widely available too. Yes, you can receive foreign TV from European territories all over Europe AT PRESENT but that's not going to be the case forever, certainly not from 28.2E.

It's very clear the future, going forward, is more and more spotbeams as SES want channel re-use across Russia, the Middle East and Africa. The hunger for bandwidth increases and as orbital positions become more and more crowded then expect operators to channel re-use at the same orbital slots in different territories.

Sorry to be the purveyor of bad news but I'm a realist and this is how it's going. All expats can enjoy Sky for the time being but the smiles will be wiped off directors faces in the Osterley boardroom come 2013 when 2E, 2F and 2G start to arrive.

Out of curiosity anyone, what is the actual estimated (as a proportion of total number) Sky expat subscribers?

the esisting fta/ftv European Services are NOT provided at 28e. they are on Astra1, Hotbird , 5 west etc. And as far as i know they will CONTINUE TO BE provided for the foreseeable future FTA or Occasionally FTV.

I still wonder why some Brits have this attitude that they want noone else to watch 'their' TV.....

If anyone has a problem with their conscience i am sure the BBC would be only too happy to accept cheques for the UK Licence Fee sent to them at ' The BBC', Bush House London !!!!!!

i live in france but will still get channels on astra 1n so may be they should encryt all channels to stop me & others

Over on arianespace they mention their next launch is the SES 2. Wonder if this is an astra one too?

"Arianespace’s next Ariane 5 mission is set for September 9, carrying another SES satellite – SES 2"

Ignore my question above. SES 2 is for the American market.

It is not a matter of license fees (at least in any major way). It is about the fees the broadcasters have to pay to the programme providers to transmit programmes. It costs considerably less for the rights to restrict you transmissions to a UK audience than it does to broadcast them FTA across Europe. This applies very much to English language programming as the providers consider that English is a second language spoken widely across Europe. German is not considered as widely spoken outside Germany and such the restrictions are not so strict outside Germany - although restrictions are starting to creep in in Austria with channels being encrypted. France and Italy are already starting to restrict free viewing with FTV setups officially only available to residents. Also on Italian TV for some time now certain programmes have been blacked out on FTA satellite transmissions because of these rights issues - mainly sport/football. We certainly do not want such a situation here thank you very much. The BBC are strongly against going encrypted and FTV because they fear this would give the government the chance to scrap the license fee and make them go subscription.

The fear most Brits have is that if the FTA reception across Europe gets easier then it will cost us more in terms of either having to pay for FTV equipment and cards or a lot higher license fee if the programme providers no longer accept that the broadcasts are sufficiently restricted to the UK

Nope - the only UK birds are Astra's

1N (temporarily only)
2E
2F
2G

No, your just lucky enough to live within the footprint.

does that mean every body in the uk is lucky to get french tv or german tv, how lucky you all are

The problem is more the broadcasters.

Most broadcasters including the BBC sell shows to overseas companies so they can show them on their networks. It's a valuable source of income worth probably tens of millions of pounds a year to each broadcaster.

Now if people in other countries can simply get them for free by tuning into Freesat stations, then that either removes that source of revenue from the broadcaster as it becomes impossible to sell what's freely available anyway, or accepting not everyone gets it, devalues it as many of the audience can get it for free anyway.

That's the reason broadcasters like spot beams.

but not everybody in other countries have a dish at 28 degree's so they are not going to see british shows because they are not that interesed in uk tv it is not that relervent to them

It's a rubbish argument. Germans and French etc. don't want to watch programs in English, unless their English is exceptionally good. People watch TV for entertainment and relaxation. It's not very relaxing to watch something when you're continually having to translate it in your head.

The current situation of encryption or spot beams is largely the result of the whims of greedy American media conglomerates who can make more money selling rights on a territory-by-territory basis (rather than on the basis of language).

Even then it's a complete fluke that we had the Spot Beam on Astra 2D as that bird was originally ordered for another satellite operator. Without that we probably wouldn't have even had Freesat.

I can't speak for the French but certainly a lot of Europeans in other countries do speak English, some very good. Go to Scandinavian countries, you'll find compared to the 'youf' of today here in the UK that their English is second to none as it's a second language learnt at school. Long before the days of Satellite, Dutch cable networks were piping BBC and ITV services received off-air on the Dutch coast (from Tacolneston and Sudbury) in to their cable networks, Norwegians and the Danes also have an appitite for English TV, certainly films etc.

Yes, I agree this is something in part dictated by greedy US film companies but if it also allows the BBC and ITV to sell it's programming abroad and make more revenue for themselves then that's a good thing for the UK television market.

I have family all who live abroad, some who are within Europe and able to currently watch remaining PSB services (+Sky's) and others outside of Europe who have to subscribe to British focused packages on local providers (Orbit Showtime). I do have sympathy with people who will loose services but still stand by my previous comments that us here on the British mainland are the ones who should be benefiting from these spotbeams by the removal of Encryption and thus more services on Freesat.

I still don't see why a uk citizen watching uk tv in northern france takes away your enjoyment of watching uk tv in the uk,or maybe you would like us to also give up our uk passports

1N will test at 1.8E

(SES Facebook page)

@M60: it is indeed true for Scandinavia, British TV programmes are very popular there which is the reason why the BBC even offers an HD payTV channel there. That's why I think the BBC is particularly interested in avoiding reception of its UK services in Scandinavia. Reception in the BeNeLux countries cannot be avoided anyway, they are too close to the UK, same is true for much of France (Paris anyway).
Spain is a problem because payTV broadcasters there are very keen on having exclusive rights for sporting events, and sometimes clash with German FTA channels.
In Germany there is a minority interested in English language programming, however I doubt it is big enough to be a concern for either the BBC or the German channels.

No Peter, I think your taking this a bit too literally. A UK citizen in Northern France can watch UKTV legitimately if they fall within the UK spotbeam footprint, likewise if they were on the coast and lucky enough to be able to receive terrestrial TV from the UK then your lucky! There's no right however to expect the likes of expats in Spain, The Canaries, Cyprus etc etc to believe they have 'a right' to UK TV reception and that all services should adopt widebeam transponders. No, I don't either think you should 'surrender your passports' wherever you want to live - after all under EU law you can live in any member state. There is however no EU law stating that every member state's TV services should be available in all member states!


Thanks Terranus, that confirms my assumptions about BBC HD Scandinavia and it's popularity in terms of Scandinavian's, most of which all speak very good English. I've been to Norway and Denmark and was really impressed at how well people there speak such good English, very nice places they are too. Lets not also forget that they are also lucky enough to watch BBC HD in full 1920x1080 resolution!

sorry m60 i may have gone other the top on my comments