I suppose it is on Freesat HD then
Same satellites so we may get a third HD channel.
Five may not be coming to Freeview HD any time in the near future, but it will show up on Sky. The two broadcasters today said Five HD will debut on the satellite service in July. Sky said the deal is an important step toward reaching its target to present 50 HD channels by Christmas. Five HD is the forty-second channel it …
It depends whether Five goes FTA or FTV.
There are two satellites in use for the UK. One of them (Astra 2D) only covers the UK and that means channels can broadcast in the clear. The other (Eurobird) covers all of Western Europe and that means channels either have to buy pan-European rights (ouch) or use a card based encryption system to restrict access.
That's the difference between FTA and FTV.
FTA = Free to Air. Means no charge to watch and no encryption.
FTV = Free to View. Means no charge but channel is encrypted.
Unfortunately the UK only satellite is nearly full - it would certainly be difficult to find room for another HD channel. There's loads of space on the other satellite but unfortunately Freesat doesn't have any kind of card based decryption system.
I suspect that Five HD will be broadcast from Eurobird which means it will be FTV which means you'll need a Sky-compatible CAM to decode it. That means either a Sky HD box or (if you're a bit naughty) a bodged up PC-based solution with a gizmo that-ahem-leverages the technology.
Anyone else get the feeling that HD on freesat and freeview will just limp along for the next few years until all the main stream channels catch up on producing the majority of their content in HD?
Makes me wonder why HD TVs are being pushed so much when (unless you are willing to pay the £30+ for sky HD or be dicked around by Virgin Medias billing department) there is so little content.
Makes me wonder why HD TVs are being pushed so much when (unless you are willing to pay the £30+ for sky HD or be dicked around by Virgin Medias billing department) there is so little content
Answered your own question I think. :(
I'd like to see Freeview HD catch up depends on how much the broadcasters "get on" with Ofcom...
It's a dish, it uses the same sort of LNB as other dishes (dual, quad or oct depends on what your old occupant had in terms of decoding equipment) point it at your sattelite, hook up the coax to your media PC with a DVB-S2 card (and maybe a smart card reader for those pay channels ;-) and Bob's your mothers brother.
Not done it myself, spent a while contemplating it, but decided to save my time and just get sky.
Yes. A dish is just a dish and this one will be pointing in the right direction to pick up FreeSat channels. Suggest you check the FreeSat channel listing though; just because the likes of Five announce an HD channel via Sky that doesn't necessarily mean the channel can be viewed on a FreeSat box, as many are encrypted using the Videogard system.
Freesat is actually just an EPG in the same way that a DNS server doesn't serve web pages.
A Freesat box alongside a Sky box tuned to the same channel is decoding the exact same datastream from the exact same satellite.
In fact at its heart Sky is just an EPG. The only differences are that Sky also broadcast their own channels and their system includes support for encryption. A lot of the equipment in the uplink chain is owned by Sky but that's basically because they got there first. Most channels are being broadcast independently and have just chosen to pay Sky and/or Freesat to be listed on their guide.
I believe that you can use the Sky dish and even the SkyHD box to watch Freesat.
I recently pulled the Sky+HD box out of the mother in laws (she never watches it and doesn't even ever use the digital on her TV either). When I cancelled her Sky contract the very helpful woman in their call centre said she could continue to use the box and dish to view freesat.
Note that "freesat" is a free package from Sky - if you discontinue an old card it will decode the channels that are free (FTV Free to View).
This new "Freesat" is just a box that can watch FTA channels (free to air)... and get a 7 day EPG if it supports Freesat EPG (otherwise the standard is Now and Next, although with a good networkable satellite box you could get the EPG via xmltv etc).
Technically it's not a Sky Dish, it's a satellite dish.
You can use any dish with sky, down to around 45cm...
If you wanted further sats you need a larger dish. Unless you really think a dish is ugly, get a standard 60cm dish which will let you use a few other sats and give you a better signal in bad weather. Some places out of the "hot spot" of Sky on Astra 28.2E need a slightly larger dish... north of scotland etc.
There are peeps in Spain that use huge dishes so they can pick up the "Sky" signal from abroad...
Remember - sky is just a package (the card) with propriety hardware. Satellite in general is great as you have a huge choice of boxes, no need to pay for recording abilities, you can have 1 2 or 4 tuners as you wish, some boxes will mix mode with DVB-T cards too so you have Digital Terrestrial and Digital Satellite (oh, and DVB-C...). Choices of so many more packages too.
Sky broadcast at a lower resolution than BBC use (BBC is DVD res), sky channels are so so so poor.
We won't be getting anymore Freesat channels any time soon.
This is because the Astra 2D satellite which has a UK only beam is FULL. (Mostly with many variations of BBC and ITV regional channels)
Astra have in their plan to launch more satellites in the next 2-5 years, including a UK only beam one (at least one)
This means we'll be able to broadcast other channels in the clear, the reason they don't do it now is the copyright holders would have a fit if it was to the whole of Europe!
It's not Sky's fault. They only support the encryption - it's up to individual channels whether they use it or not.
Channels often have to do it because otherwise the channels would be watchable by all of the EU. That would mean the broadcasters having to buy the rights to do that. You really, /really/ don't want to know how much that would cost.
Astra 2D is generally accepted to only cover the UK(*) and the rights holders therefore charge significantly less. Unfortunately as a couple of us have said, it's pretty much full right now. C'est la vie. It's not Sky's fault (they were their first) and Freesat should have known that when they launched (there's been a capacity problem looming for several years now).
Sky /could/ move some of their Pay stuff onto Eurobird but then why should they risk damaging their service. When Sky launched no-one else wanted to use 2D.
Although Astra need to launch a satellite soon anyway because 2D is nearing the end of its life. It might be that the proposed 'new' satellite is just a replacement. Some people have said that its spot beam was an accident anyway and that Astra would replace it with a 'proper' wide area beam.
I'm not much into the satellite side though so I could well be spouting utter crap. It does happen sometimes :)
I'd rather see a High Def version on Channel 4, I am sure there must be enough Satellite bandwidth for it.
As to Channel 5, they brought back their stupid logo, they really ruined their Freeview picture, and no when I set up a Freesat series timer I only want to record ONE of each not every repeat.
Personally I gave up and use BT Vision TV Replay, no logo and shockingly the streamed version is more watchable than Freeview.
However I only watch the Gadget Show, and Fifth Gear seems to have vanished.
I own too many PVRs.
As soon as feeble ofcom assign a HD channel to some shopping channel or history of the nazi's drivel im kicking my telly in.
PS
I've had enough of BBC 'behold the majesty of our history/british isle's ' toss as well...
They should just put up a still banner stating ' we kept slaves ,got rich and now its all over , the end'