Freesat HD!

[alferret]

Made an impulse buy tonight and brought the Humax HD Freesat STB.
Very impressed with the quality of the channels over the Sky box we were using. Excellent EPG fast and responsive BBC HD looks awesome and I'm very impressed, all hooked up over HDMI to our Sharp Aquios.
Unfortunately as this was an impulse buy I am disappointed with the lack of HD content that is currently available. I feel I should have looked into the current state of HD on Freesat before spending £127.

I'm in 2 minds as to whether it should go back to Comet or is it a keeper

[danielf]

Do a search for freesat on this site. As far as I'm aware, more HD channels are expected in the (near) future...

(Chris is the local freesat freak btw, expect him in here shortly )

[demented]

Well taking either Chris's view or my own ITV HD will increase it's content quite a lot later this year in one format or another. Expect C4 HD too.From March BBC HD will be 9hrs and there have been there merest of hints the beeb are thinking beyond that. In 2010 there'll probably be a 4th HD channel.

Good evening.

You have BBC-HD and ITV-HD as a red button service. Word on the street is that Channel 4's ill-advised exclusivity deal with Sky will expire by December, allowing C4-HD to join Freesat by the end of the year. There is some suggestion that Luxe-HD may also join, however I'm not sure how much of a selling point that is.

Freesat-HD is about the future of FTA broadcasting. Almost none of the HD channels currently on Sky are going to feature on it as they are all HD versions of channels that were already subscription-only. But there will come a point where all the main pubilc service channels will be broadcasting entirely, or mostly, in HD (i.e. BBC1 in HD, BBC2 in HD, rather than a separate HD channel). Freeview isn't going to be able to cope with this; only Freesat has the bandwidth.

[alferret]

Thanks for the replys.
After some consideration I've decided to keep it.
It has a lot of benefits over a sky box and its future proof (to a certain extent)

I'd say it's far more future-proof than any Freeview box currently on the market, and more future proof than the Freeview+HD boxes that are due out.

It's certainly more future-proof than the early Freeview boxes were (many of which no longer work). And it already has the ethernet card built in for when iPlayer becomes available on Freesat (which won't happen on Sky, for a great many years, if ever).

[demented]

Yes, I hope iPlayer does appear on freesat in the next 6 months as was originally envisaged.

[Callumpy]

Yes, i want them to do the iPlayer thing.

[pdoherty76]

Originally Posted by Callumpy

Yes, i want them to do the iPlayer thing.

iplayer has been pretty much confirmed to be happening in the autumn.

http://freesatuser.blogspot.com/2009...in-autumn.html

Originally Posted by pdoherty76

iplayer has been pretty much confirmed to be happening in the autumn.

http://freesatuser.blogspot.com/2009...in-autumn.html

I think you're being unduly pessimistic about the likely functionality of Freesat iPlayer. Assuming it has download capability, rather than merely streaming (and there's no reason to expect it won't), bandwidth won't be an issue. You simply select content to download and come back when it's done. I barely get 2Mb a lot of the time but I don't have any issues with iPlayer on my Mac.

---------- Post added at 19:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:36 ----------

... and you're not exactly hot off the Press either, joinfreesat.co.uk ran that item a week ago.

[demented]

"Autumn" depending on what that means is a bit disappointing or fairly cool. I think it's a bit pessimistic too, ethernet will be a lot better than Push VOD like is being planned for freeview. We all know how pants anytime was for a long time.

[alferret]

Originally Posted by Chris

... and you're not exactly hot off the Press either, joinfreesat.co.uk ran that item a week ago.

Yup your right, here is the email in its entirety.

It has been suggested that BBC’s iPlayer will launch on the Freesat platform this Autumn, after initial speculation suggested a Spring release.
iPlayer is seen as an important milestone for both the BBC and Freesat, with the iPlayer website servicing 516 million visits during 2008. This should open up the possibilities of ITV (catchup), C4 (4oD) and Five (demand.five) launching their own versions too, rather than the single Kangaroo service which was vetoed earlier this month.
Whilst the Freesat EPG is very much of fixed design, the BBC iPlayer is said to carry it’s own look and feel of menu with clear likeness to the existing iPlayer on Virgin Media.
The iPlayer service will be available on all Freesat digital boxes and IDTV’s via the included Ethernet port using your broadband connection, with different speed options expected to satisfy the ranging speeds available in this country.
James Strickland, Freesat’s Director of Product and Technology Development said;
There are technical challenges in terms of delivering quality content over the top that in the UK’s current state of broadband development still pose a challenge for an operator trying to bring a quality, managed service,
In the immediate term we are looking at ways of delivering quality content to viewers today. As the technology delivers on its promise of quality of service it will allow us to grow.
There will be a low bandwidth option but we will be looking at offering a high bandwidth option for those networks that are capable of reproducing the content in an acceptable fashion.
Ultimately the best service would be delivered if the ISPs, broadcasters and content providers can work together to provide a place for each business to deliver the promise of the internet in terms of audio and video.
Freesat have made it clear that whilst their platform will remain a ‘free’ service, they will allow on-demand chargeable services to be available via Freesat, which should give viewers an opportunity to pay for sports and movies should they wish, similar to Freeview. These could in the long term include channels such as Setanta Sports etc.
Will Abbott, Freesat’s Marketing and Communications Director said;
Freesat won’t stop broadcasters selling content through on-demand, but it won’t affect the free TV service at the heart of Freesat.
We will look at anything as it meets our core requirements but at the moment we are not looking at injecting cost to users of the core platform,
Our success is down to a very clear simple pay-once proposition and we are very mindful of that and it’s something we will continue to make central to what we offer.
We would have to make clear that Freesat is not selling you anything. We recognise that there is a need for content owners to make money from content and we would work with them to make it clear to customers that they were retailing any content, not us.
Information courtesy of Wotsat.

[pdoherty76]

Originally Posted by Chris

I think you're being unduly pessimistic about the likely functionality of Freesat iPlayer. Assuming it has download capability, rather than merely streaming (and there's no reason to expect it won't), bandwidth won't be an issue. You simply select content to download and come back when it's done. I barely get 2Mb a lot of the time but I don't have any issues with iPlayer on my Mac.

---------- Post added at 19:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:36 ----------

... and you're not exactly hot off the Press either, joinfreesat.co.uk ran that item a week ago.

Hey I don't claim to be hot off the press, the guy who runs joinfreesat is a journalist and presumably has access to info and people I dont. My blog is just my little blog.