News on FreeSat?

musa

Is there any?,will it give us anything we don't already receive,should we hold on to our old Sky boxes?

wil

Not a lot of info yet.
Arqiva have only recently been awarded the contract. Supposed to be up and running March 2008 on Eurobird1 28.5e.
Up to 300 TV and radio channels, some HD
Apparently started testing in August. Transp C5 11.385 horizontal.
Alba, Humax, Panasonic, and Sagem have all been appointed to produce receivers for Freesat.

http://www.arqiva.com/press-office/press-releases/press-releases-2007/arqiva-builds-satellite-distribution-network-to-enable-freesat

http://www.astra2d.com/freesat.htm

byte

I'd have expected all the Beebs, ITV, C4, etc to remain/join Astra 2D, due to its tighter footprint.

Moving to a wide beam would suggest there would be some sort of encryption (not what BBC would want surely)?

wil

Yes Byte, I really wondered about that, on face value it doesnt seem to make sense, but then they havent been exactly forthcoming on any real info at all so its difficult to draw any immediate conclusions.
Maybe its all that available to them.
Maybe it a commercial thing of not bidding for transponders that Sky might want.
Perhaps as was suggested before they might consider soft encryption so that you would have to buy a Freesat box, perhaps subsidised or similar to whatever distribution model they have worked out for Freeview. Isnt Arqiva handling that as well. Perhaps to make it worthwhile for the stb manufacturers and keep it within the jurisdiction of the UK licence fee.
Maybe they havent even thought about it.
It's all too vague at the mo to do much more than speculate.

musa

wil wrote:

Not a lot of info yet.
Arqiva have only recently been awarded the contract. Supposed to be up and running March 2008 on Eurobird1 28.5e.
Up to 300 TV and radio channels, some HD
Apparently started testing in August. Transp C5 11.385 horizontal.
Alba, Humax, Panasonic, and Sagem have all been appointed to produce receivers for Freesat.

http://www.arqiva.com/press-office/press-releases/press-releases-2007/arqiva-builds-satellite-distribution-network-to-enable-freesat

http://www.astra2d.com/freesat.htm

Has any0ne looked at the tests on C5 11.385?

Ulsterman 1690

Maybe they could move stuff like BBC News, parliament and the radio and interactive stuff onto the wide beam and free up more capacity on 2D for HD stuff ?

Or is there enough space for an "Astra 2E" ?

L1011

Theres close to no frequencies left now, they could over-load the current birds powerwise by filling the remaining gaps but it'd yield probably 5 transponders. Box-space wise, 28E can support at least three more craft but they'd need to be Ka-band and I can't see dual frequency LNBs being easy/cheap to get any time soon.

11.385 is currently active carrying other content - there are no tests on it.

watty

My guess Eurobird for news, parliament, Radio, Interactive, long term EPG info. The main channels will stay where they are.