Freesat

Hi All,

Was recently offered a freesat HD box, which made me look into the available channels - why is it that channels such as Dave, Fiver, Five US, Quest are available on Freeview & on Sky, but not on Freesat, yet they come from the same satellite as Sky?

Apologies if this has been asked previously.

I would imagine that it is because, Freesat & Freeview are in competion with each other, they are also funded via different revenue sources.
Regards Otto

My understanding is that the signals actually come from a small group of satellites and further that each of those satellites has multiple transponders with different footprints.

Anyway there are several reasons a channel that is available on freeview and/or freesat from sky (note that despite the similar names freesat from sky and freesat are not the same thing) may not be available on freesat.

1: Due to agreements with the content suppliers TV stations broadcasting unencrypted are generally required to make an effort to limit their signals to their own country (some overspill is allowed but not too much). Afaict there is only one transponder (Astra 2D) that meets this and it's difficult to get slots on it.
2: Afaict it's cheaper to have sky broadcast your channel with sky encryption than it is to rent a transponder slot yourself and then pay seperately for sky EPG inclusion.
3: Some channels have existing agreements with SKY that are hard to get out of. IIRC five got out of this for their main channel by broadcasting their channel twice but that gets extremely expensive.
4: Sometimes despite a channel being free to air and availiable on a suitable sattelite and despite sky including it in their EPG the freesat guys decided not to include it in their EPG. LUXE TV (and it's corresponding HD channel) springs to mind as the best example of this.

Thanks for the replys chaps,

I thought it may all be to do with funding & stuff.

A shame you can't just have so called "free" tv that includes all the channels available.

If Murdoch got his way, we'd all be paying through the nose for everything - the BBC licence is quite enough IMHO!

I think there is a difference between "Free to view" and "Freesat" the "Freesat" I think requires a card which can only be bought with a one off payment by UK residents but "Free to view" can be viewed by anyone within the foot print of the satellite. It is all down to copyright I think and some programs don't have Europe rights so can't allow those outside UK to view their programs.

There is also something about the electronic program guide and many "Free to View" boxes do not have 7 day guide.

No, ericmark. You don't need a card to view Freesat, just a dish and a set top box (or PC card/dongle). (And a tv licence!) Freesat is unencrypted and open for anyone within the Astra 2 footprint to view, and that includes most of europe. There's a lot of ex-pats happily watching UK programs via it in france, germany northern europe and about halfway down spain.

You're thinking of the free sky thing where you paid a one off fee to Sky to use their equipment with a card which allowed access to the fta chans. Don't know if they do that.

Freesat allows you to use a Sky dish (or any dish, really) and just replace the Sky box with another. Or as I did, stick up my own satellite and bypass the Sky bit entirely.

I have a four-head lnb feeding a nice set top box (twin tuners so it can record) and two PC dvb-s cards feeding Mythtv on a pc acting as a proper pvr. But I have to keep one dvb-t card (Freeview) running for channels like Quest and Dave.

It is a shame, but still - seems to be better than everyone else has. Americans don't seem to get any transmitted tv guide data and are expected to pay for subscription services for that, even on the FTA stuff. Freeview and Freesat both give a full 8 days on all but a few obscure channels. And their FTA stuff is nearly all god channels and a few BBC ones.