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….

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.

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.

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.

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’!

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.

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.