HDTV Goes Live Away From Sky

Using the same dish people can now cancel sky and still receive HDTV. However it is still early days, due to contractual obligations, but HDTV without a subscription arrived in the U.K. on May 6th 2008. Consisting of an 80 channel line up, all of the BBC, ITV and channel 4 are included in this venture away from sky. There is no confirmation however whether or not E4 or more 4 will be included in this but the BBC launched its HDTV service from satellite, and is receivable using a non-sky receiver.

Receivers are currently from Panasonic, Sagem, Humax and the Alba group (the Alba group currently consists of : Goodmans, Bush, Grundig and Alba). As usual whilst free to receive, freesat is another proprietary standard and is already threatening companies with litigation, whilst freesat enabled receivers will be available they will be probably be unable to use the electronic program guide, because this is "copyrighted". However the BBC is providing an i-player client for "genuine" badged freesat receivers.