Join Freesat

The battle for free satellite tv is hotting up, but with what we know, how do things stand? Fair enough its hard to put both platforms to battle before one has even launched, but lets give it a go anyway

Working on the assumption that freesat are launching a standard receiver only (to begin with), they are going to have to compete with Sky’s existing £150 deal (BBC are presently claiming a £180 price tag) . freesat 0 Sky 1.

The freesat service is likely to have a much more reliable receivers, made from household brands like Humax. Not only will they function better, but they will probably look better too. freesat 1 Sky 1.

The freesat EPG (the channel listings and programme guide) is said to be very flexible, allowing you to tailored to suit your channel preferences, order, region etc. The Sky EPG is fixed and not very user friendly. freesat 2 Sky 1.

C4, C4+1, Five, Five Life, Five US, Sky Three and Setanta Sports News are all FTV channels at present, which means freesat won’t be able to access them. Fair enough the last few aren’t that important to most, but C4 and Five will be. freesat 2 Sky 2.

E4, E4+1, More4 and More4+1 presently remain subscription only channels, which means they can only be gained through a subscription to Sky, starting at £16 per month. As we are focusing on the available ‘free’ channels, whether that be FTA or FTV, we’ll not give Sky a point for that, as it costs to see channels which should be free anyway in my opinion. freesat 2 Sky 2.

So there we have, a draw!

(I’ll throw PVR and HD receivers into the mixing bowl once I have more details on whether they’ll be available from launch!)