Sky to launch "Freeview Plus"

I find the new boxes for Freeview are just as nice as Sky to use. With the 7 day EPG coming soon and the upgrade to MHEG (sounds - yay) we should be reaching Sky levels when it comes to the interactive stuff (by which I mean the text services).

It's just a shame that the ITV digital boxes won't get the new versions of MHEG. I'm hoping we get the CBeebies games soon though as the "CBeebies Interactive" service on Freeview is disgusting.

Rumours of "FreeSat" are bouncing around the corridors at TVC - apparantly now the BBC has migrated its channels to a different Astra satellite, other companies may follow-suit.

The latest I heard was that it was planned to be an alternative rather than a superior to Freeview on DTT, allowing people in the parts of the counrty as yet unreached by DTT to have free digital TV. At the moment the idea is very much a rumour as noone has a clue how it'll be funded, but that's my reckoning of it!

I really can't understand how anyone can state that DTT is fundementally better than D-SAT. D-SAT has incredible amounts of bandwidth, which in the future could provide around 100-200 channels of High Definition, Dolby Digital Television. In contrast, DTT can barely provide 25 standand res channels!

As well as this, as previously mentioned, D-SAT is avaliable everywhere in the UK, whilst DTT simply isn't. Also, for the VERY FEW unable to recieve DSAT due to obstructions, next generation wireless networking can easily re-distribute D-SAT signals at a fraction of the price of DTT.

I think the argument is the current situation is heavily-compressed, at-times-unwatchable television on DSat, whilst DTT (which is pushed to its absolute limit - 20 channels is its real maximum!!) is providing far superior, less compressed pictures ... however this is generally only the case in strong signal areas, as most of the country will experience blocking and breakup of the picture at some point during a programme.