FREESAT ROLL OUT.

FREESAT ROLL OUT.

FREESAT ROLL OUT is the subject for today.
Since the official very very quiet kick off from freesat on the 6th May 2008 you could be forgiven for thinking it was all a dream, until that is you have a close look at this weekends offerings for sport lovers and especially football fans.
The EURO 2008 gets underway this Saturday the 7th of June with every game promised and as many as possible on HD and with the BBC/ITV as partners showing alternate HD games.
The following month we will be treated to the whole coverage in HD from the Olypics in Beijing so the new freesat is rolling out nicely. The promise of around 200 channels by the end of the year is great news for the consumer as everything is free. Freesat was never going to burst onto the television scene with hundreds of channels never before seen anywhere, you do not have to be a genius to work that one out, but what many will be surprised about is the channels that many have been paying for were in actual fact free to air all the time. It's better explained with a friend who has had a sky subscription for about four years and her viewing this last few months has been all of our national free TV programming, ie; BBC, ITV etc... and a Film channel called True Movies and when I spoke to her she told me she needed to keep sky because of her True Movies, she had no clue that she had been paying for a free channel and didn't understand why it was not written down anywhere.
Getting back on track, if as expected freesat is going to give us around three times again as many free to air channels (ie;200 or so?) what channels are we likely to get ? HD channels are more than likely from BBC HD, ITV HD, Channel 4 HD, and the certainty of sporting events are already on us, so we should really consider this as the norm for the future. We have been surprised that Classic FM was not in the first line up and we will be even more surprised if it is not added soon although we know it is not on the Astra 2 satellite, most of the Classic FM videos are excellent filming so hopefully HD. If you are fortunate enough to own one of the four officially licensed set top boxes from freesat you will notice the number breaks in the freesat line up, the most obvious being channel 5 but many more channel slots have still to be filled and to avoid confussion with existing satellite receivers freesat have considered this also by making their channel line up numbers the same as known epg configurations, so anyone with existing satellite equipment can easily add the freesat box to their sitting room and be able to transitionally use the freesat remote with little problems.
Very cleverly thought out by freesat that for one months subscription to different satellite subscriptions you can buy a new freesat box subscription free for ever.
As each new channel is added freesat can only get better and as each new update is added to the new freesat set top boxes the receivers will get more and more user friendly, these updates are done automatically by the freesat boxes with little interactivity if any from consumers which makes the "Set it and Forget it", feature unique to freesat. Although totally unnecessary for 99% of the population there is an option to fiddle with the boxes and attempt to add further channels, but this facility has no metadata feature.
Rumours abound about different channels, but we feel no regret about passing on from our source that we can expect huge changes with respect to BBC regionalisation stepping away from London and concentrating more on localised regions in Scotland Ireland and Wales. We think this is a very good idea which will generate huge interest in local regions with respect to local area interests and an example is the drama village in Wales.
We did notice a free channel called channel M which covers Manchester region, we thought this idea was what has been sadly missing and hopefully this could be the pilot for all other regions to get going. We think it would be good to be able to see our local football teams in action whether they be premium league or kick around saturday players, where else but at kick around are we to get future football stars ? there is plenty of room for channels like channel M.
Is it news to you ? then you read it here first!