The writing is on the wall for broadcast TV via terrestrial (an aerial), and via satellite. It has been decided that internet-delivered TV is the way forward. Exact dates for the switch-off of terrestrial and satellite have not yet been set. Terrestrial is certainly not 2030 as one poster has suggested, but it is planned with in the 2030s unless there's some slippage.
The satellite switch-off is likely to happen before terrestrial. Freesat and Sky share some of the same satellite channel services, so the two things appear to have a joined fate. Sky is already pushing hard to move to an IP-only platform. New subscribers are being pushed towards Sky Stream and Sky Glass rather than the satellite receiver in Sky Q.
The idea of making recordings doesn't fit with IP TV. Any content will remain on the respective channel's servers, so if you want to watch something again then calling up a bookmark or searching again for a programme is how it will be. That's fine for mainstream stuff, but not much use if you or someone you know appears on the local TV news one night, or if some person or situation is no-longer deemed to be socially acceptable to the perpetually offended mob. On this last point, I'm concerned that we're entering an age of censorship by the backdoor, with decisions driven by the whims of public outrage through social media pressure rather than genuine concern for the moral welfare of society. Haven't we already seen the negative effects of cancel culture and social media campaigns. (Apologies for the little diversion there.)
Current terrestrial broadcast licences expire in 2034. That doesn't mean the services will be switched off in 9 years time, but it is a marker point. The key to any switch off will be in the rollout of an alternative to terrestrial. This centres on the uptake of broadband in homes where they're either too remote or the occupiers have no interest in the connected world. Convincing someone's nanna that she has to spend £20 a month on a broadband subscription on top of the licence fee just so she can continue watching Bargain Hunt is going to be an uphill battle. For this and other reasons, I can foresee the licences being extended beyond the 2034 end date.
Quite what the situation is with satellite is another question. According to figures for 2024 from GfK, Freeview (aerial TV) is consumed by 16 million homes. By comparison Freesat is viewed in 2 million UK homes. Your guess is as good as mine whether that's a small enough number for the Government to consider terminating the service and migrating viewers to Freeview or a stripped down version of Sky's Stream service. Freesat is part of the UK Government's commitment to public service broadcasting, so a decision to switch off has wider implications.
For someone moving away from Sky and still wishing to receive and record, the current 4K Freesat boxes from Arris will work with the wideband LNBs used by Sky Q, and also the quad LNBs as used by Sky+ and Sky+HD receivers. Old Humax Freesat boxes only work with the quad-type LNBs.
For recording Freeview, a USB pen drive does work in many TVs, but it has some serious limitations in a lot of cases. The biggest one is that there's only one tuner in the average TV. This means you don't have the ability to record 'the other channel'. You can watch the channel as it is being recorded. You can also be out or have the TV switched off while it is recording. What you can't do is record the football or the motor racing while someone else watches BGT or Strictly Ballroom.
The other issue is that the recordings are locked to the TV they were made on. That's not such a big deal, but what do you do when you come to swap out to a new TV? A Freeview recorder starts to look like a good idea, even if it only runs for a decade.
