HD on Digital Terrestrial - On Air

If someone is spending up to £1,000 on a Freesat HD TV (your estimate), then installing "yet another cable" isn't going to be an insurmountable cost. If they buy a Freeview HD TV next year, then it's going to be connected to an aerial via a cable, albeit to a socket rather than an existing hole in the wall. That's assuming their aerial is suitable for Freeview reception.

I do wonder why your partner's parents don't just upgrade from Sky+ to Sky+HD. No extra cables required, but they would be paying out an extra £10 a month in their subs.


I take your point that some may be disappointed that they can't receive the Freeview HD broadcasts, but they haven't got anything less than the services they were expecting when they bought it. News of Freeview HD has only recently become a popular topic of converstaion amongst anyone other than us anoraks!

My sister is in this situation with a Freeview receiver built into her HD TV, and was rather put out when I explained that she couldn't pick up Freeview HD. She currently uses a Freeview+ box to record programmes, so is used to switching between the internal receiver and the separate box. When the price of FreeviewHD+ boxes come down to a reasonable level she will simply replace it.

Our Sky bill is already around £70-£80 a month when you take into account the Sky+HD, Sky+, & various multi-room subs. As we already have a Sky+HD box in our house, they would have to buy a second Sky+HD box at about £150/£200. They want a new TV for the living room to replace the existing 42" Plasma they already have, which will be moved into the dining room / kitchen and mounted on the wall.

The ariel is suitable for Freeview reception as the TV's we have at the minute can also receive Freeview.

An estimate for adding another cable from the Sky dish to the TV in the living room was quoted at around £90-£100, involving drilling through walls etc. Freeview HD is an ariel lead from the socket into the back of the TV.

Ouch!


Well, they're not running on a tight budget then!

Good luck with whatever they decide to go for in the end!

Hmm. You went from decidedly snotty to courteous in the space of a few posts.

What happened Stu, did you find a picture of Jay on Metropol?

i am confused as to why they have listed central west region as lichfield. i was under the impression that once analogue channel 5 disappears, lichfield would be redundant, with transmissions based solely at sutton coldfield?

I was never snotty!

I don't go on Metropol!

The HD service from Lichfield is only temporary until Sutton C's DSO in Sept 2011. As you may be aware a lot of engineering work is in progress at SC to prepare it for DSO. Therefore it makes sense to use Lichfield instead to ease any problems

Have Channel Four confirmed that they will be going FTA for C4HD on satellite and joining Freesat HD? There's been lots of speculation that they will eventually join Freesat HD - but in the current financial climate things have gone very quiet...

AIUI they are currently locked in to a carriage deal (probably subsidised) with Sky for satellite, on a 2A wide beam which can be seen across Europe, and thus has to be encrypted. They're on 2A because they share a Sky-leased transponder with Sky Sports HD1 and Sky Real Lives HD, and Sky handle their uplink (probably a deal to get C4HD on the Sky HD platform?).

For Channel Four HD to launch on Freesat they'd have to move to 2D, which has a UK/Ireland beam and rights holders will allow un-encrypted broadcasts to the UK, from 2A/2B and probably find capacity independent of Sky? (ITV have failed to find this capacity - it's in very short supply, hence there is a transponder of ITV1 regions that isn't on Freesat - as it is encrypted FTV and only available on Sky boxes - and ITV HD has to be carried as a semi-hidden "Press Red" stream as it is on a European wideband, though not encrypted)

AIUI at the moment the situation is likely to be :

Freesat HD : BBC HD, ITV HD
Sky HD : BBC HD, C4HD (ITV HD not in the Sky EPG but can be added for live viewing, but not recording or live-pausing in the new Sky HD EPG)
Freeview HD : BBC HD, ITV HD, C4HD (and Five HD in the future)

I don't know if Five HD is going to be on Sky HD and/or Freesat HD

Maybe if you actually worked in electrical retail (as I do) then you wouldn't fit it 'incredibly astounding'.

We know only what we are told, and what we are told gets changed frequently.

3 years ago, out best information on HD was that it was available only through Sky and would require the purchase of a £300 box with HD that doesn't involve Sky (or even a deal to get it cheaper through Sky) being a pipe dream.

Last year, Freesat launched (in itself confusing because the 'Freesat from Sky' brand had allready been used for several years before this) and we sold that to customers wanting HD but not wanting to pay Sky because the idea of just getting HD through an aerial was a similar pipe dream.

My predecessors also sold OnDigital and BSB on similar grounds - because plumping for it was a viable option to give your customers based on the information available at the time.

The Digital UK Reception Predictor pages are slowly being populated with Freeview HD information.

I'm more concerned about when we'll see any receiver hardware than the rollout. Given the best estimates still say 'Early 2010' for any actual receivers, the launch in December isn't going to be of much use to anyone in the general public.

Suggestions are that there will be a 'small number' of receivers on sale in December in the North West, with more appearing early in 2010. PVRs are due Q2 or Q3 I think...

Hopefully they will be on sale in volume before the World Cup which will be a driving force I'd imagine.