Does Freesat have a long-term future

[coys]

Like many, I'm tempted to ditch my Sky subscription since 90% of the time we only ever watch the standard UK channels but I have to subscribe to Sky to use the PVR functions.

Does Freesat have a long-tern future? Does anyone know if there are there any agreements in place guaranteeing that Freesat will transmit for a certain number of years?

As far as Freesat advertising is concerned it has been very quiet over the last few months.

[alunfennell]

Freesat is nothing more that a collection of the Free to Air channels that were broadcasting on the Sky Service and under the Sky Epg which they payed SKY for .

BBC and ITV joined together to break away due mainly to the Digital switchover as they are public service broadcasters payed by the liesance payers and have got to be received by 99.9% of all households across the country along with regular services by useing transmitters and Cable companys an large number of the population were unable to receive BBC or ITV, satellite coverage reaches the rest of the population ....

In my opinion Freesat will continue for a good number of years ! but I also see with companys like ITV who have money troubles something might rock the boat at some stage, The receivers for Freesat can be connected to Internet for updateing or streaming extra content, this could also be used to introduce a form of subscription by using code to unlock channels in the future.

Freesat have been very quiet over the past few month , due to them promiceing so much in the way of new channels and nothing has come only the channels once on Sky that did not wish to pay for the expencive EPG they provide.

Finially I think that over the next 5-7 years a new Satellite opperator will come into the UK market and give sky a run for its money and possably Freesat will be swallowed up along the way, This is what is been played out in Italy at the moment as Sky Itialia are been slowly pushed out and RAI have been swallowed up by the new Giant !

Freesat will be here at least for a few years after the Digital switchover but after that who know especially when its a none profit organisation some or all might get greedy .........

Regards:
Alun

[coys]

Thanks Alun for your thoughts! I feel a bit more enlightended and a bit more comfortable about Freesat now!

[rft-hillview]

I would like to thank Alun for his informative post and ask him a couple off questions.

I am fortunate to have very good signals from my local transmitter so have been on digital for some time - however my tele is reaching the point where it is going to be replaced. One consideration is whether there is likely to any advantage in changing over to freesat at the same time - more expensive obviously but are there any advantages. The other question is on HD - obviously on a tiny screen HD is meaningless - at what point does the extra image resolution become worthwhile.
thanks Ralph

[kevin777]

I would like to thank Alun for his informative post and ask him a couple off questions.

I am fortunate to have very good signals from my local transmitter so have been on digital for some time - however my tele is reaching the point where it is going to be replaced. One consideration is whether there is likely to any advantage in changing over to freesat at the same time - more expensive obviously but are there any advantages. The other question is on HD - obviously on a tiny screen HD is meaningless - at what point does the extra image resolution become worthwhile.
thanks Ralph

The benefit of Freesat is, there's several more channels, it has a guaranteed reception with the Astra 2 footprint and there's a larger capacity for HD channels in the future. In addition, on some Freesat boxes you can manually enter a postcode of your choice, thus not restricting you to your local ITV channel. For instance, I live in Edinburgh, but prefer to receive the London ITV1 because it's HD, rather than my local channel which isn't available in HD on freesat yet.
Re: TV (at what point do you notice the benefit). Not really on small or portable TV's but certainly on widescreen and large TV's over 28" I would imagine. The difference between SD and HD is miles apart.

[digicon]

You do realise that the initial post is now nearly 4 years old and i would have thought that what ever the OP was deciding to do then has been done since the post

[carpettony]

strange how old posts can resurface and be interesting. .Freesat still going , but it's amazing how many people don't know about it !!!
I've used freesat for a long time because of the small number of channels i could get with freeview. I get my tv signal from a sub transmitter.
Also get more channels than the 'freesat from sky' and i dont have to constantly pay for the privelige of a freeview card for each of my boxes