BBC Freesat to launch in 2008

[nielm]

Looks like the BBC (with ITV) is launching its own Free-to-view Sat service Freesat to compete with Sky and to provide service to areas which cannot get Freeview (eg me )...
Apprantly it will have high definition and personal video recorder compatibility. and will launch in Spring 2008

With luck this will mean : Sat dish + Hauppage DVB-S card + Sage == FTA HD, and high quality 16:9 anamorphic digital SDTV for all those BBC channels

(currenly I have BBC1+2 on belgian cable, all 16x9 letterboxed which I have to zoom and crop for my 16x9 TV... what a waste of pixels )

Wikipedia (of course) has more

[brewston]

Yes, that sounds cool. I currently have the Sky freesat and the quality suffers as I have to take an analog signal out of the digibox. I guess with this I can swap the analog card for a DVB-S one and get digital straight to the PC. Plus I would get HD on decent channels (without having to line Rupert Murdoch's pocket any further!)

Wonder if I can use my existing Sky dish though ? Any ideas ?

Tim

[nielm]

probably... according to wikipedia, it looks like freesat will use the same satellites as Sky... but as it has not launched yet, who knows!

[mattdcknsn]

Does anybody know if this is limited to Europe? I cant seem to find any info about getting it in the US. If you can recommend some websites that would be great too.

Thanks

[Lucas]

It will not be possible to receive the sat signal in the US. Back in the analogue days it was possible to receive the signal (side lobes) albeit with extremenly large dishes of around 10 metres or more.

Even in Europe, the coverage will most likely be limited to the North West like it is for BBC now.