Five On Freesat!

When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

Commander Gideon wrote:
When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

For C5 to join Freesat, they need to move to being FTA.

To be FTA they need to be on a UK narrowbeam transponder, in other words
Astra 2D.

There doesn't appear to be any space currently available on 2D, there's
been speculation in other forums that they might do a swap with RTE who
are currently encrypted and on 2D, but who knows ?
Also, unless C5 intend to put all four advertising regions, and Fiver
and US all on the same and exclusive t/p they need to share uplink
facilities with someone else.

The bottom line is don't get too excited about C5 (and C4-HD) popping up
on Freesat, until you see evidence that they are moving to 2D.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Commander Gideon wrote:
When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been
cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

For C5 to join Freesat, they need to move to being FTA.

To be FTA they need to be on a UK narrowbeam transponder, in other words
Astra 2D.

There doesn't appear to be any space currently available on 2D, there's
been speculation in other forums that they might do a swap with RTE who
are currently encrypted and on 2D, but who knows ?
Also, unless C5 intend to put all four advertising regions, and Fiver
and US all on the same and exclusive t/p they need to share uplink
facilities with someone else.

The bottom line is don't get too excited about C5 (and C4-HD) popping up
on Freesat, until you see evidence that they are moving to 2D.

I thought the idea was that freeview was going to migrate to S2 (the boxes
are supposed to support S2 correct?) to squeeze out the extra bandwith for
station additions.

"mr deo" wrote in message
om...

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Commander Gideon wrote:
When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been
cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

For C5 to join Freesat, they need to move to being FTA.

To be FTA they need to be on a UK narrowbeam transponder, in other words
Astra 2D.

There doesn't appear to be any space currently available on 2D, there's
been speculation in other forums that they might do a swap with RTE who
are currently encrypted and on 2D, but who knows ?
Also, unless C5 intend to put all four advertising regions, and Fiver
and US all on the same and exclusive t/p they need to share uplink
facilities with someone else.

The bottom line is don't get too excited about C5 (and C4-HD) popping up
on Freesat, until you see evidence that they are moving to 2D.

I thought the idea was that freeview was going to migrate to S2 (the boxes
are supposed to support S2 correct?) to squeeze out the extra bandwith for
station additions.


We SKY customers still want to see these channels. ITV have already got
childish over ITV HD, we don't want any other channels doing the same.

"mr deo" wrote in message
om...

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Commander Gideon wrote:
When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been
cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

For C5 to join Freesat, they need to move to being FTA.

To be FTA they need to be on a UK narrowbeam transponder, in other words
Astra 2D.

There doesn't appear to be any space currently available on 2D, there's
been speculation in other forums that they might do a swap with RTE who
are currently encrypted and on 2D, but who knows ?
Also, unless C5 intend to put all four advertising regions, and Fiver
and US all on the same and exclusive t/p they need to share uplink
facilities with someone else.

The bottom line is don't get too excited about C5 (and C4-HD) popping up
on Freesat, until you see evidence that they are moving to 2D.

I thought the idea was that freeview was going to migrate to S2 (the boxes
are supposed to support S2 correct?) to squeeze out the extra bandwith for
station additions.


We SKY customers still want to see these channels. ITV have already got
childish over ITV HD, we don't want any other channels doing the same.

mr deo wrote:

I thought the idea was that freeview was going to migrate to S2 (the boxes
are supposed to support S2 correct?) to squeeze out the extra bandwith for
station additions.

None of Sky's 8 million Digiboxes in use support DVB-S2, and I'm sure
Freesat's don't either.

(Freeview is the brand name for the UK DTT service, nothing to do with
Freesat or DVB-S)

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
mr deo wrote:

I thought the idea was that freeview was going to migrate to S2 (the
boxes
are supposed to support S2 correct?) to squeeze out the extra bandwith
for
station additions.

None of Sky's 8 million Digiboxes in use support DVB-S2, and I'm sure
Freesat's don't either.

(Freeview is the brand name for the UK DTT service, nothing to do with
Freesat or DVB-S)

All of Sky's HD boxes support DVB-S2 tho. And yea I did mean freesat not
freeview (I would prefer DVB-T/T2/S/S2/H/SH/Whatever) ;P
And I know that a lot of the Freesat do support S2, BBCHD was originally
touted as a S2 stream..
http://www.humaxdigital.com/freesat/specifications.asp
I think the KEY to Freesat should have been it's HD selling point, The fact
that they are allowing some companys to release SD units is lame.
a lot of the other mfgr's dont list details (so I would assume they dont
support it)

mr deo wrote:

All of Sky's HD boxes support DVB-S2 tho. And yea I did mean freesat not
freeview (I would prefer DVB-T/T2/S/S2/H/SH/Whatever) ;P
And I know that a lot of the Freesat do support S2, BBCHD was originally
touted as a S2 stream..

Fair enough, but as most current D-Sat viewing is carried out on
millions of non DVB-S2 complaint boxes, the broadcasters will not, and
cannot afford to have two SD streams (one DVB-S the other S2) for each
of their dual platform channels.

I think the KEY to Freesat should have been it's HD selling point, The fact
that they are allowing some companys to release SD units is lame.
a lot of the other mfgr's dont list details (so I would assume they dont
support it)

I agree with you. I my view better to have made all Freesat boxes HD
capable, then you could have the possibility of exclusive Freesat HD
channels, without the need for SD simulcasts. However there's too much
legacy SD/DVB-S1 stuff to make that viable.

One thing the Irish might consider is to make all the channels on their
DVB-T2 service HD from the start, and ensure that all DTT receivers are
HD/DVB-T2 compatible. Then they'd need no wasteful SD/HD simulcasting on
the platform ?

The only problem is of course that (at least initially) HD DVB-T2 chip
sets will be more expensive than SD, the last thing you want when
launching a service is for the receivers to be too expensive, and that's
why I suspect Freesat didn't opt for the HD only route ? .

You may have been misled by a news headline, BBC I think, which was
linked here recently, and said something like: "Five channels to join
Freesat", but if you followed the link and read the actual article, it
meant a number of channels totalling five were joining Freesat, not
the Five channel group.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:56:23 +0100, "Commander Gideon"
wrote:

When is Five joining Freesat? I read somewhere that the way has been cleared
for them to join,but that was months ago!

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
mr deo wrote:
I agree with you. I my view better to have made all Freesat boxes HD
capable, then you could have the possibility of exclusive Freesat HD
channels, without the need for SD simulcasts. However there's too much
legacy SD/DVB-S1 stuff to make that viable.

One thing the Irish might consider is to make all the channels on their
DVB-T2 service HD from the start, and ensure that all DTT receivers are
HD/DVB-T2 compatible. Then they'd need no wasteful SD/HD simulcasting on
the platform ?

The only problem is of course that (at least initially) HD DVB-T2 chip
sets will be more expensive than SD, the last thing you want when
launching a service is for the receivers to be too expensive, and that's
why I suspect Freesat didn't opt for the HD only route ? .

Are you talking T2(view) or S2(sat) ;P
As for the Irish, I dont think they received a rollout, so moving to T2
w/.264 for terrestrial should be a requirement. When HD broadcast start
over Freeview next year a lot of people will find that the FreeView kit cant
display the new stations (I find that horribly sad).

As for FreeSat tuners not being able to cope with S2 streams, you could be
correct in that they just wanted to save a lot of money. Licensing cost for
the h.264 (high-def) decoders are only 25p per unit, the S2 License is a max
cost of 50p per unit, HDMI cost 2p (per port), and adding the S2/H.264
hardware is around £3.50 additional cost (Marketing wise I guess you would
triple all of those numbers) so we are looking at £4.27 Per set real cost
added to a regular FreeSat box, throw in a little more for caps/whatever.

I have no idea about the other cost involved really, and it could be that
the broadcasters didnt want to foot the bill for the cost on the
sat/upload/compression side of things.

I only just noticed that the OP had crossposted this all over gods creation,
or else I probably wouldnt have originally responded.