Loading ...Sep 22 2008
Channels 9XM and 9X UK have joined the Freesat line-up. They should be immediately available and update automatically on your Freesat receiver.
9XM (channel 513) – 9XM is a music channel aimed at Hindi youth. The channel will showcase the best of Bollywood music and dance, and will broadcast 24 hours a day.
9X UK (channel 662) – 9X UK is aimed at the UK’s Hindi community. The channel offers programming with enduring universal themes with modern story-telling techniques. Big stars, beautiful sets and a real connection with life today, and deep understanding of generational and social changes that resonate with today’s viewers.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Why so many radio channels. I can just go on the internet for hundreds of these channels and just connect the PC to my hi-fi and a presto. I do hope theirs going to be more TV channels, are all the future freesat channels all to be come radio/music video channels, may be some Sci-Fi. I have not got freesat as yet, just watching all the up and coming freesat channels & blogs and comments and then just wait see if it’s like all that rubbish on freeview. I realy think we all should go back to 5 channels then there wouldn’t be any room for all those back to back, reality shows, and all those other repeated films we have to put up with every day, anyway I’ll just sit back and wait and then make my mind up when the time come’s or when im realy convinced but it wont be until 2009, for now good luck to freesat, regards.
ErnieQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Ernie – these are television channels, not radio.
adminQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Woops Ernie!
Glen McFarlaneQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Hi admin.
Yes fair play, but I can still watch music channels on my PC, including live gigs and international music, the choice is massive, I spend most of my evenings watching internet music television, I just hope freesat music TV is not like TMF & THE HITS, total rubbish. I know freesat is a none subscription service, so I should not exspect to much here. I do feel freesat is a good thing, as I said im not convinced as yet, it could give SKY a good kick up the backside as they still rule the roost, regards.
ErnieQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I do intend eventually writing a blog about this, but essentially, for the first year or so all you can expect from Freesat is tons of music, shopping and religious channels. This is because the large majority of existing FTA (free-to-air) channels (all those on Sky without a card) have signed up to Freesat and are just awaiting inclusion on the EPG.
It’s only really when Freesat has large viewing figures that other, dare I say it more exciting channels like Dave will consider going FTA, as for the time being they’ll make significantly more in subscription revenue from Sky than advertising only revenue. When Freesat gets to similar viewing figures as Freeview, then you’ll see them becoming FTA, I’m sure.
adminQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
…when Freesat gets to similar viewing figures as Freeview…
Isn’t Freeview the primary digital TV service in Britain with eight million or so viewers? Is Freesat likely to catch up?
Glen McFarlaneQuote
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Can’t say for certain, but Freesat can’t be focusing solely on covering parts of the UK that don’t have access to Freeview, they must be looking to the long term future of the service across the whole of the UK. It’s only my opinion but satellite is significantly more capable of allowing future growth of both SD and HD services than Freeview ever will, so might eventually be the major player in UK digital TV.
adminQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
(Apologies for the length of this but I think it’s an interesting point in terms of Freesat’s long-term future)
With regards to the relative popularity of the Freesat and Freeview platforms in the future, I think the key factor will be HD services; more specifically how fast the transition to HD production and broadcasting happens and how appealing HD is versus SD for Freeview viewers.
For example, let’s be optimistic and assume that by 2012 the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have each launched another HD channel, e.g. BBC HD2, ITV2 HD and either E4 HD or Film4 HD. Given Ofcom’s current plans, none of these channels will be available on Freeview because there simply won’t be the capacity.
And of course it will not be possible to convert other multiplexes to MPEG-4 and DVB-T2 in the near future because then everybody who has already bought a Freeview box would lose access to some channels. And given that Freeview equipment sales recently passed 27 million (obviously some of the later ones were replacements for old Freeview boxes or second ones; Ofcom estimates that 9.6 million homes have Freeview only: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtu_2008_q1/ ) that would be massively unpopular.
So therefore, to avoid a “second switchover” (i.e. consumers having their current equipment being made obsolete by changes in tranmission technology and having to buy new kit) I assume that they will wait until several years after Freeview boxes have been sold with DVB-T2 and MPEG-4 capabilities as standard. Given that the *first* such boxes are not expected to be available until 2010 or 2011 ( http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a93019/analysis-risks-in-freeview-hd-plan.html ), further multiplexes might not be converted to be HD-capable until say, 2018.
So finally how does all this relate to Freesat? Well, I think the major growth in Freesat will occur when HD broadcasting in the UK really starts to take off (remember there are already about 10m HD-capable TV sets in the UK; lack of HD content is the key issue here) and Freeview viewers realise that the amount of HD content on Freeview isn’t going to increase anytime soon and so the only non-subscription option available if they want more HD content and choice is Freesat.
AndrewMQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 am
Ernie – The Hits now 4Music is a great channel with concerts on some nights. eg Girls Aloud last Sunday.
DenisQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:57 am
Everyone seems to think that HD and the PVR will be the making of Freesat. I happen to think the ‘killer app’ for Freesat will be BBC iPlayer via the Ethernet port. Then there really will be a differentiation in service between Sky and Freesat.
Any idea when it’s coming?
jonnyenglishQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Dear God.
MattQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
Ernie, there is lots more music channels to come; Flava, oMusic, Fizz, Channel U, Bliss, Flaunt, NME, Clubland, and Rockworld. Really got a good choice now on Freesat which is going to get even bigger. And there is a rumor that Red is rebranding into a music channel next month (called Hits TV), plus I suspect 4music will also go FTA in the next few months. And a lot of these channels are much better than the The Hits and TMF are (or was in regards to The Hits). So something to look forward to!
Then there are the movie channels; World Movies is a good quality channel which I’m hoping will appear on the Freesat epg at some point, and Movies4Women and Movies4Women2 will be launching soon, so I hope they will join Freesat aswell.
ChazQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hi Denis.
Yes I have whatched 4music and thought it was going to be a breath of fresh air, but im afraid there’s no change, and as for Girls Aloud what a load rubbish, as with all those R&B bands singing through there noses and I wonder what they are like singing live.
ErnieQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
9xm 9x uk What a load rubbish,
timyQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
timy, I can’t say whether 9xm and 9x uk are rubbish or not, as I don’t think I belong to the audience they’re aimed at; I am, therefore, not qualified to judge (not that I’ve actually had a look yet anyway). They are clearly aimed at a certain niche market, and that can only be a good thing – to be a good all-round platform, Freesat needs to serve minorities as well as the majority.
By the way, there seem to be repeated calls from posters (e.g. Ernie, on this thread) for something like Sci-Fi to come to Freesat. Well, as an aficionado of science fiction, I personally hope that Sci-Fi *doesn’t* come to Freesat – that particular channel ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ and suffers all the faults bequeathed it by those who insist upon calling the genre ‘sci-fi’!
DaveiQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Hi Davei.
I remember when I first watched Star Trek many MOONS ago when the crew all had hand held communicators, just Sci-Fiction at the time now we got mobile phones and satellite’s, it play’s a big part in our daily lives and we wouldn’t have feesat, so for now, beam me up Scottie.
ErnieQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Good point about the iPlayer on Freesat, jonnyenglish, I’d completely forgotten about that. I have no idea when it will arrive, but when it does I think it will be a big competitive advantage over Freeview.
I suspect, though, that it won’t be just on Freesat; I think if the BBC Trust approves it (I’m assuming they will need to) then it will be for both Sky and Freesat. Otherwise there will be quite a few Sky+ HD subscribers (almost 500,000, although this figure includes ROI) who would be annoyed at not having the same access to the iPlayer as Freesat and Virgin Media viewers.
AndrewMQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I think the next good thing for freesat will be more hd (i don’t really care about bbc iplayer, as i can stream through my xbox 360 if i want to watch it on the big tv) I would only care about iplayer coming to freesat if it was in better quality.
DanielQuote
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
The problem with access to the iPlayer from other platforms is that they haven’t necessarily been designed with IPTV capabilities from the off. Sure, there’s an ethernet port on the SkyHD boxes, but unless and until Sky makes that available, iPlayer won’t happen on that platform.
Freesat boxes have to have the ethernet port as part of the spec, and the interactive MHEG has enhancements to use it. I suspect that that will be used to drive the iPlayer on the platform – launch via the red button on a BBC channel, and then the MHEG can request the streams via the ethernet port.
Sky boxes use OpenTV; so a different app would have to be written. And the ethernet port would need to be enabled for that too. That’s even assuming the version of OpenTV supports the appropriate protocols to access whatever will be serving the iPlayer streams.
What if it doesn’t? Should the BBC spend license payer’s money to get the firmware in Sky boxes updated, so they can access iPlayer? Will Sky pay for the upgrades, so that the BBC can deliver an application on their platform (and Sky dragging their heels on interactive stuff was one reason cited for Freesat, don’t forget!).
I don’t actually think the Trust will need to approve iPlayer for Freesat anyway; iPlayer has approval, and this is just another platform. They didn’t have to get approval for adding it to iPhone, or N96, or Wii, after all.
The BBC remains platform neutral, in that it doesn’t necessarily favour one platform over another – but that doesn’t mean that it can’t exploit the features of one or another. Nor does it mean they have to work to the lowest common denominator. So, there are more news multiscreens and more interactive sports on satellite than on Freeview, for instance.
If the Sky platform has the abilities to do iPlayer, then in time, they’ll probably roll it out. But I wouldn’t expect them to do that until Sky has updated the boxes to enable the appropriate functionality, which they’ll likely only do a) if they feel they’re losing people by not having iPlayer or b) if they launch something similar of their own.
In the short term at least, iPlayer will be Freesat only. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, for some types of users iPlayer (and Kangaroo, if that comes to the platform too) may well be just as good a solution as a PVR. Not for all, by any means, of course – but if you can catch up on just a few missed things and don’t want to build a library on the hard drive, it may do.
Nigel WhitfieldQuote
September 24th, 2008 at 4:02 am
@Daniel: “(i don’t really care about bbc iplayer, as i can stream through my xbox 360 if i want to watch it on the big tv)”
This is in general for everybody and in every forum. Your particular needs shouldn’t be the important thing. Imagine Freesat getting a letter saying I dont need iPlayer because I can watch it on my computer….
I could say..More HD? I don’t really care, I have a BlueRay player and a big collection of BlueRay discs…
So, not everybody has an Xbox360. I have a Wii and iPlayer for it is not very good. Having it on Freesat with a well designed application controlled with the remote would be better.
So back to my general point… the mayority don’t really care about your particular case. Having iPlayer on Freesat is and added feature so it will always be welcome.
It´s like those who say they don’t need proper bluetooth on an iPhone because they don’t have any bluetooth accesories. Or copy&paste because they don’t use it….
Juan PabloQuote
September 24th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
More asian channels please for the millions of asians living in the UK who have switched from Sky(aka Bye Sky) to Freesat. 9X & 9XM channels are very entertaining and are compared to expensive subscription channels like Zee TV. Keep it Freesat!!!!!!!!!!
IziQuote