Freeview vs Sky

Ok I'm starting to understand things here (Cheers Chris)

But can I just ask everyone some questions here? If Sky hadn't decided to 'launch' this option, what were the chances of a rival freesat package being any good? Is an alternative still potentially possible for use on non sky branded decoders? Will this convince ITV not to go into the clear, BBC style?

I understand Five are somewhat comitted to FTV carriage - how long to run on Channel 4's contract? Does being FTV rather than FTA benefit anyone other than sky (necessitating the use of a card and hence the opportunity to upgrade)?

Not very, without persuading some channels to go FTA. With an FTA receiver, you'll get BBC channels, News Channels (including Sky News, incidentally), shopping channels, and precious little else. The basic 'number of channels' count is very high with FTA (indeed, there may well be more FTA channels on Astra 2 than pay channels), but there is very little variety.

That said, I've still yet to see any evidence that Sky's deal, unless it is different to the present non-subscription deal, will be much better - the only differences are that you'll also be able get ITV, C4 and C5 and use the Sky EPG (and use the interactive services if you're that way inclined). But the big difference is that the beeb's 'Freesat' idea (quite what the beeb would have to do with it other than marketing I don't know) would be cheaper than getting a Sky box.


From what I understand, C4 have their carriage deal for E4 and FilmFour (which must remain as pay channels) tied to the deal for Channel 4 itself, and as it stands it wouldn't be possible to make C4 go FTA without renegotiation. They'd still need postcode allocation too, with their being several versions of channel 4 (to allow for pseudo-regional advertising) carried on Sky.

The reason why the terrestrial channels were (until BBC1 broke the mould last year) FTV rather than FTA are a legacy from the operating conditions of Sky Digital at launch. At launch, the whole service came from Astra 2A, at the time the sole occupant of the then new 28.2degE position. Sky had pre-booked the entire satellite, meaning that everyone who wanted to be on that position had to deal with Sky for their carriage, which straight away allowed Sky a piece of the action.

Aswell as that, that satellite has a footprint similar to that of the Astra 1 position, i.e. it covers the whole of Western Europe. Rights-sensitive programming licenced only for transmission in the UK therefore meant that it was necessary to encrypt even some free channels, to ensure that only UK viewers could watch it. With BBC services, funded as they are by the licence fee, it would be a big political blunder if they were viewable FTA in other countries with the UK viewer footing the bill, again making it essential that BBC channels were FTV rather than FTA.

With the case of the BBC1, this encryption operated on a regional basis too, where some things were only licenced to be shown on BBC1 Scotland and not BBC1 Network etc, so the 4 national BBC1 services they provided each had to be encrypted and then postcode allocated, both to put the correct service on 101, and to stop people from watching anything other than their own version of BBC1.

Whilst this was a good money earner from Sky, at launch it was the only way to go, particularly for the BBC.

This changed in 2001 when Astra 2D was launched. Unlike the other satellites, this one had a footprint tightly focused on the UK and Ireland, with just a bit of overlap into France. This now offered a solution to the problem of a UK broadcaster wishing to be free but also not wishing to transmit to the whole of Europe.

The ITV carriage deal, caused quite a stir when they were not as tied to Sky as the BBC were. The three transponders used for ITV are directly licenced 'by ITV' (quite what that means in terms of company entity I don't know - presumably ITV Network Limited?) to Astra, not sub-let by Sky. They were still FTV because that was necessary in order to get postcode allocation on Sky's, but they weren't postcode restricted as the BBC was. Instead there was a single ITV encryption key, and although the correct ITV service was postcode mapped on 103, anyone who can receive one ITV service can also receive all of them by adding them to add channels - something which you couldn't do with different BBC1 regions.

At the time that all seemed quite groundbreaking, but the BBC took it even further just over a year later. They proposed to switch all of their services to Astra 2D, largley clearing up the rights issues that forced them to stay encrypted on Astra 2A, saving on encryption costs, and they also proposed to have different BBC1 regions allocated to 101 whilst staying FTA. The beeb envisaged doing this mapping inside the box by a separate piece of software (which they offered to pay for). Despite various attempts at blocking this move by Sky, a compromise was eventually reached (much more of a compromise for Sky than for the BBC) whereby BBC1 England would be mapped to 101 by default (causing a few, but ultimately ignored, cries from people asking what that meant to RTE if they ever went FTA), and then the BBC would pay for postcode mapping of the other regions to 101 if a valid viewing card was inserted.

It later transpired that the old system by which BBC1 was transmitted - letting Sky do the carriage, encryption, postcode allocation, postcode restriction for only 4 regions actually cost more than the new system of permanently transmitting every single BBC1 region, sub opts and all, and just paying Sky for postcode allocation - something which on the face of it looked a lot more expensive in terms of carriage fees to Astra alone.

The only drawback is that where material licenced for a single region is broadcast on BBC1, in the old days the way BBC1 on dsat was tightly locked down meant that it could be broadcast on satellite, now they occasionally have to blank out the screen, but that seems to be considered a necessary evil compared to the huge cost advantages of the new system.

This has now however set a template whereby other broadcasters might do the same thing. I believe ITV briefly mentioned 'an interest' in seeing if they could do things this way when their carriage contract eventually comes up for renewal.

As I noted at the time, locking channels into the Sky fold as they had with BBC1 was a nice little money earner for Sky in the past, but it's day is over, and whilst of course Sky will mourn it's passing, they'll have to accept that that source of revenue is drying up, and will surely be gone alltogether before much longer.

Well, a day later and the whole offering doesn't appear quite as good as it might have to start with.... this from the BBC News website:

and

So apparently after 2 years you either cough up to carry on getting FTA channels that are encrypted or lose them.