Freesat launches today

No card slot and no Conditional Access Module internally either - it is entirely FTA.

There is a suggestion that the Humax PVR may be a version of their iCord sold in Europe, which does have a CI slot that takes a CAM that in turn takes a viewing card, but as Sky don't provide a CAM for their services this is no use (officially)

There are reverse-engineered "Sky compatible" CAMs that accept Sky viewing cards and allow non-Sky boxes and PCs to receive Sky SD and HD services - but you need a valid FTV or Sky sub AND every few weeks you have to put your card back in your Sky box to keep it authorised.

Depends whether the Freesat PVR is clever enough to do this - it might be. Pausing Live TV in an interactive stream would be a useful facility for the Olympics.

Same satellites - the Astra 2s and Eurobird.

Don't forget that the BBC, ITV, C4, Viacom, Flextech/Virgin Media don't use Sky's transponders anyway - they lease them directly from SES (who own the Astra 2s) etc.

freesat and Sky receivers will be tuning to the same audio and video streams - it is only the EPG and interactive streams that are different.

For some reason (possibly the channel list previously shown on DS), I assumed that Freesat was going to keep the same EPG numbers as Sky to avoid confusion.

It's bad enough that some trailers already show three different channel numbers (Freeview, Sky & Virgin). The Radio Times listings are also going to struggle squeezing in another set of numbers against each channel. Surely, before DSO they could all get together and agree to use the same numbers (or is that too much to ask).

Nice idea, but I guess the problem is that an EPG which suits Freeview's 80 or so channels wouldn't suit Sky's hundreds of channels and vice versa.

Plus there are the problems that some channels might lose prominent positions on certain platforms in order to match up with another, causing inevitable disagreements between broadcasters. I could see it being a bit of a hornets' nest.

Actually, I wasn't thinking of including Freeview, as their STBs couldn't cope with the 4-digit radio channel numbers. But there surely isn't any reason why Freesat, Sky, Virgin, BT Vision et al can't get together and format a sensible EPG list.

Alot of the Virgin and Sky numbers are similar, but not identical.

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http://www.itv.com/channels/hd/

Nice new ITV HD logo on the video on this page. Just click on the Craig Doyle link near the bottom!

That would be the one already mentioned in the ITV1 HD thread then...

It's similar but an animating version in that video - it's well worth checking out!

I did keep clicking on that link, and could hear Mr Doyle; it took 3 attempts before I realised the link didn't push me back to the top of the screen where the video was playing! (bad planning!).

The video is very low quality. I wouldn't buy SD on the basis of that, never mind HD!

Personally I found that video on ITV's website to be a very **** demonstration of what HD is about, didn't help that their video quality was pretty low either. They should at least go follow how the Sky HD website is explaining it, or link it to someone who can do it properly.