1: Regional Variations

Since Digital Sattelite launched in late 1997, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have been broadcasting regional variations of their channels on the narrow-beam sat. They broadcast an entire channel for what amounts to a few hours of regional programming a week. While it might have made sense somehow in 1997 when bandwidth on Astra 2D was plentiful, today this practice is utterly ludicrous and an enourmous waste of bandwidth.

The broadcasters and Freesat need to take a close look at how they provide regional programming on FTA as the current system is madness, especially as viewers already receive their own regional channels via Freeview.

Removing these regional variations would allow at least a dozen HD channels to occupy the freed-up transponders.

2: Sky broadcasting encrypted channels on Astra 2D.

While the Satellite is partially owned by Sky they do have the right to do this, but really OFCOM should step in and demand they move all encrypted channels to a wider-band sat, on which there is more than enough available bandwidth to house their channels.

Sky removing all encrypted channels from 2D would free up enough bandwidth for dozens of HD channels.

Sadly Sky are just too big to be pushed around, so problem 1 is the most viable to fix.

I agree with freeview sd channels are better, itv is the worse on freesat.
Its a fact that freeview has better bit rates as in the home cinema mag they did a report into it with compared the two in a table.

Why is freesat always a waiting game and we get to the date and its still waiting game.

On a happy note i love the bbc hd channel and well done to them for this service i have not notice any drop in quality as watching on pionneer plasma. May show up more on cheaper brands of tv.