Have your say & ask the experts

Like many others, I bought into freesat on the back of the the excellent kit available and the promise of superior picture quality - not least through the increasing number of HD channels that would be coming our way sometime soon...

Almost one year down the line we are still stuck with the one HD channel (ok call it one and a half if you include the occasional offering from ITV) on which the quality is getting worse - BBC slashes bit rate thread - and the news that we now cannot get C4HD although they are out of contract with Sky because there is no room.

So if freesat is crippled by a lack of satellite space to transmit any more channels in HD unless they reduce the quality of HD to near SD, the point of freesat is?

Yours slightly peeved (although the foxsat hdr is actually quite good)

Indeed John but the main thrust of their pitch was, and still is, free to air HD which we are now told is hamstrung in terms of quality and choice by inherent constraints of the platform which they must have known about from the start. That's not too say i'm not impressed with some of the output on BBC HD - the Proms looks and sounds especially stunning and switching between BBC2 and BBC HD only reaffirms what a step up it is. However, the platform has hit an HD dead end if it cannot physically transmit anymore HD content without reducing quality.

John makes a valid point. I've just had to buy a Humax Foxsat HD Freesat set-top box for my parents, as it's the only way they can get digital TV in their village (there's no Freeview coverage there, as I discovered when installing a new TV this weekend).

I got frustrated watching just four fuzzy analogue channels on their old TV, so popped out and bought a new Freeview set – only to discover it too could only pick up four analogue channels via the rooftop aerial. So Freesat does the job of "filling in the gaps" where Freeview coverage doesn't exist.

Yes, more HD content would be an added bonus, so it will be interesting to see how Freesat HD develops. Thanks for the links Bilbo, I'll keep an eye on the C4 situation.

Cheers Andy

I have a similar sitaution with my parents as they will have to go down the freesat route as although the analogue reception is actually ok they can't get any reception on freeview even if the aerial was upgraded.

Stop me if I'm wrong here, but freesat is broadcast from the same satellite position as sky?  therefore the solution is to

a) move the freakin satellite to give more bandwidth to both services, or

b) unlock channels already broadcast by sky, make them free to air thus channels aren't being double-broadcast hogging unnessecary bandwidth.

Get rid of all those non-stations like all the '+1' duplicates.

If you want to watch a programme an hour later then record it.

Dump Dave and Dave Ja Vu and Yesterday and all the rubbish repeat stations that only show the same 5 TG's or QI's over and over and......

Replace them all with a decent history channel that actually does history and not 15 year old Antique Roadshows!

Get rid of stations that only air TV gambling. Plenty enough of that online to satisfy anyone.

Quit QVC. (What the ____ is diamonetique anyway and why would anyone want to buy it let alone watch people buying it?!!)

Make the 24x7 rolling news channels all share one channel. It is all the same news and all comes from the same few agencies.

Dump BBC Parliament. Anyone that obessed with a few old men discussing the... "Use of creosote on a Sunday" bill (second reading) can subscribe to Hansard.

unconditional:

Stop me if I'm wrong here, but freesat is broadcast from the same satellite position as sky? 

Channels for both provider's are transmitted via a cluster of satellite's, namely Astra 2a,2b,2d located at 28.2 degrees east and also Eurobird 1 located at 28.5 degrees east.

unconditional:

a) move the freakin satellite to give more bandwidth to both services,

unconditional:

b) unlock channels already broadcast by sky, make them free to air thus channels aren't being double-broadcast hogging unnessecary bandwidth.

daveh75:

Not really sure what you mean by this either! Broadcaster's don't double-broadcast.Freesat and Sky are receiving the same signal's/transmission's with a few exceptions,channel five for example broadcasts regional FTV variations only available to Sky and one FTA version for freesat but as i said this the exception rather than the norm.

then how can C4HD "not have the bandwidth", given it's already on sky so already there?

unconditional:

daveh75:

Not really sure what you mean by this either! Broadcaster's don't double-broadcast.Freesat and Sky are receiving the same signal's/transmission's with a few exceptions,channel five for example broadcasts regional FTV variations only available to Sky and one FTA version for freesat but as i said this the exception rather than the norm.

then how can C4HD "not have the bandwidth", given it's already on sky so already there?

To be available on freesat it has to be transmitted un-encrypted(FTA) and ideally move to astra 2d.because if they were to go fully FTA on their current transponder they would fall fowl of copyright's holders and need hugely expensive pan-european broadcasting right's amongst other things.

chebby:

Get rid of all those non-stations like all the '+1' duplicates.

If you want to watch a programme an hour later then record it.

Dump Dave and Dave Ja Vu and Yesterday and all the rubbish repeat stations that only show the same 5 TG's or QI's over and over and......

Replace them all with a decent history channel that actually does history and not 15 year old Antique Roadshows!

Get rid of stations that only air TV gambling. Plenty enough of that online to satisfy anyone.

Quit QVC. (What the ____ is diamonetique anyway and why would anyone want to buy it let alone watch people buying it?!!)

Make the 24x7 rolling news channels all share one channel. It is all the same news and all comes from the same few agencies.

Dump BBC Parliament. Anyone that obessed with a few old men discussing the... "Use of creosote on a Sunday" bill (second reading) can subscribe to Hansard.

Merge all right wing papers together under one roof,ditto the middle and left wing,save paper-

Let all news channels broadcast the same political viewpoint -oh and

"Dump BBC Parliament. Anyone that obessed with a few old men discussing the... "Use of creosote on a Sunday" bill (second reading) can subscribe to Hansard".

Mmmm.

JohnDuncan:

The point of freesat is a statutory obligation on the part of the terrestrial broadcasters with a PSR to provide digital television to all of the population by 2011 or whenever the analogue switch-off is. They can't do that with Freeview alone. So the fact that you happen to get some HD out of it is a bonus, not the raison d'être.

Yet if you go to Freesats home page there is great play made of HD broadcasts, in fact more than the SD side of things.

BTW welcome back John, hope you had a good holiday.

laserman16:

JohnDuncan:

The point of freesat is a statutory obligation on the part of the terrestrial broadcasters with a PSR to provide digital television to all of the population by 2011 or whenever the analogue switch-off is. They can't do that with Freeview alone. So the fact that you happen to get some HD out of it is a bonus, not the raison d'être.

Yet if you go to Freesats home page there is great play made of HD broadcasts, in fact more than the SD side of things.

Couldn't agree more.  I bought into Freesat mostly on the basis that it had promise of HD without a monthly contract. BBC has been good, and improved, but a transcient ITV and a lack of C4 since its unshackling by Sky is a bit of a joke.