Decide what to buy

Free-to-air HDTV will soon be coming to the UK. In the spring, the BBC and ITV will launch a new service called freesat, which will provide HD programming from the two networks’ channels via digital satellite, with no subscription charge.

The initial costs are still uncertain but have been estimated to be around £180. Panasonic are planning to release TVs with integrated freesat receivers, leaving the satellite dish (and installing it!) as the only extra purchase.

Freesat is claiming to be launching with over 80 channels, which sounds great, but it’s not all pie in the sky.

For a start, freesat seems likely to launch without content from Channel 4 or five, both of whom are tied into contracts with Sky for the time being.

The head of the competing service Top-up TV thinks freesat will struggle to make an impact against Sky and Freeview, a market where Sky has ‘earned its monopoly’. I think he’s right that people will take some persuading to switch from Freeview to freesat, but freesat will probably provide a decent alternative to Sky or Virgin for people who would like to start receiving high def programming.

To my mind, the most interesting problem for freesat will be Sky’s own free-to-air service, confusingly named ‘freesat from Sky‘. This service is currently competes with Freeview, offering more channels and better coverage in exchange for a £150 set-up fee. Freesat from Sky doesn’t offer HD channels at the moment, but if the other freesat starts gaining some traction and impacting Sky subscriptions it would presumably be pretty straightforward for Sky to flick the switch and allow freesat from Sky viewers to receive the same HD signals as freesat viewers will be getting.

With Sky marketing weight behind the service and fatigue from a number of ‘free’ services beginning with F starting to build, it would be easy to imagine Sky becoming as successful in free-to-air TV as it has been in subscription TV over the past decade.

Blog posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm under Televisions. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.